Manufacturing cycle time is the total amount of time that it takes to create a finished product. This includes everything from the time the raw materials are purchased until the completed product comes off the assembly line.
Cycle time consists of two types of hours – productive and non-productive. Productive hours include the process time, which is the time that the actual production process takes, and inspection time, which is the time spent on quality control and checking for defects.
Non-productive hours include move time, which accounts for the time that raw materials and finished (or partially finished) products are being transported from storage or warehouses to the factory floor as well as between stations on the assembly line itself. The other part of non-productive hours is queue time, which is any time spent waiting between tasks.
To calculate the total cycle time, the productive and non-productive hours used to produce each product are added together:
Total cycle time = process time + inspection time + move time + queue time
