Time Tracking to Reduce Cycle Time  One of the principles of
Lean Thinking is to eliminate delays which consume up to 95% of
the total cycle time. But to understand cycle time and delays,
you will need a simple way to track the time it takes a product
or service to travel through your process. Excel helps make this
easy.  Time Tracking  Entering dates or time into a cell in an
Excel worksheet is error prone - many "/" and ":" and numbers:
05/14/05 07:05. Here's the good news: Excel will populate a cell
with the current date and time with a single keystroke.  The
keystrokes are:    • Date - Ctrl(;) (i.e., hold down the control
key and press the semicolon)   • Time - Ctrl-Shift(;) (i.e.,
hold down the control and shift keys and press semicolon)   •
Both Date and Time: Ctrl(;) + Space + Ctrl-Shift(;) Don't hold
the Ctrl key down when hitting Space.  Excel short cuts to
record date and time  Pretty simple isn't it? This starts to
make it easy to measure cycle time or length of stay. Here are
some examples:    • A