Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines released a cool P.R. video showing the production of cruise ship cabins on an assembly line with a 14 minute(!) takt time.
The key point, for me at least, is that even “big one-off things” can often be broken down into sub-assemblies that have a meaningful takt time of some kind. We have to look for the opportunities for what can be set up to flow vs. reasons why we can’t.
Click Here for the direct link to the page on Royal Caribbean’s press page.
Now that is a cool video! I had no idea that cruise ships were built this way, but it makes total sense.
Bigger, complicated jobs are almost easier to apply lean methodologies to since there are more opportunities to separate the work.