Making Sense of Takt-Flow-Pull

We’ve found a wall that people must get past when learning to think Lean. Teaching the 7 Wastes and 5S as eliminating searching, motion, errors, (7W), etc. by reorganizing the work area and making it more visual (5S) strikes most people as ‘common sense’, and they get it.

Seeing and Experiencing Takt-Flow-Pull

People usually get that flow is a better way to work than start-stop or batch-and-queue. However, the trouble is that pulling one piece every takt time simply does not make sense to most people. It’s counterintuitive. How can doing one be more efficient than doing 10?
The essential tools of point of use and cellular layout can get you a long way, but the true breakthroughs in thinking and seeing opportunity only come when people start to pull one piece of work at takt time. Making sense of Takt-Flow-Pull begins with seeing and experiencing.

Learn By Doing

Rather than explaining using theory or examples, the best way is to demonstrate through a flow exercise (legos, paper airplanes, etc.). We have found that it’s best to tell people up front that Takt-Flow-Pull will seem wrong and will seem counterintuitive but to have faith and give it a try.

Start with our paper stuffing exercise.

---