About Cycle Time Management

Cycle time describes the period required to complete one cycle of a system. The cycle time is defined in the system properties.

This page discusses:

See Also
About Workload Balancing
About the Process Gantt Chart

Cycle Time Definitions

This describes the cycle time definitions.

Leaf System
System with no child system. In the Process Gantt Chart and Workload Balancing panel, cycle time is displayed only for leaf systems.
Total Time
Displayed in the Workload Balancing panel, it is the sum of the operation times in a system.
Utilization
Displayed in the Process Gantt Chart, it is the ratio in percentage between the total time of the operations and the system cycle time.
Idle Time
Displayed in the Workload Balancing panel, it is the sum of time intervals during a cycle time when the system has no operations.
Drifting Operation
In the Workload Balancing panel, an operation exceeding the cycle time when sequenced in a system can have a Multi-Cycle attribute. The drifting operation and following operations in the sequence can shift to other systems, depending on the product flow.

Cycle Time System Inheritance

When a system has a zero cycle time, it automatically inherits its parent system cycle-time. If the parent system itself has a zero cycle time, it remains zero.

For example, in this figure, defined cycle times are written next to the system:



Because of the inheritance principle, the result is:

  • Root System has a zero cycle time, but it does not change because it has no parent.
  • System D has a zero cycle time, so it inherits its parent System A cycle time: 100 sec.
  • System B has a zero cycle time, but its parent Root System is zero, so System B stays with a zero cycle time.
  • The other cycle times do not change.

Cycle Time Display

Once cycle times are defined for systems, they are displayed in different panels and Gantt charts.

System Tiles

Cycle time can be displayed in System tiles: Defining Cycle Times.

Workload Balancing Panel

In the Workload Balancing panel, cycle time is displayed by a red line at the top of the columns and in the table. Cycle time is displayed only for leaf systems. Maximum cycle time value among the leaf systems is displayed at the left of the vertical line axis.



Process Gantt Chart

In the Process Gantt Chart, cycle time is displayed by two vertical green bars called cycle bars. They appear if the system is a leaf system and has operations.

The cycle bars stretch from the top of a system row to the bottom of its last operation row.



If the leaf system has a zero cycle time, only the first bar is displayed.

When operations exceed the cycle time, in system view and product flow on cycle time view, they are cut and displayed underneath. For example, in the image below, OpF to OpH exceed the cycle time.



In the case of drifting operations, the drifted operations are colored violet.