Takt time is a useful metric that many companies could benefit from using.

It is the 'beat' or 'rhythm' that the workers need to work to 

Takt time is the time produce a unit of product or service in order to match the customer demand for the product or service.   

For example if you have 480 shirts to press, and an 8 hour shift ( 480 minutes ), then your Takt Time is 1 minute (  1 minute per shirt ).

• Producing faster than Takt time results in the waste of "overproduction",  or in an unnecessary peaks and troughs in production ( work too fast...then have nothing else to do until the next order comes in )
• Producing slower than Takt time results in the waste of "waiting" by the customer or by the downstream activities in the process and results in lower customer satisfaction.