For many manufacturing systems, cycle time reduction is obviously the key to improving competitiveness. Therefore, cycle time reduction is regarded as the most critical and urgent task in production control. This chapter first summarizes the benefits of cycle time reduction on manufacturing systems from existing references and practices, such as reducing work-in-process levels, improving productivity, reducing unit costs, responding to market demand changes, and improving yield. This chapter also points out that cycle time reduction does not necessarily mean speeding up the execution of all operations. In addition, the cycle time reduction target of a product can be decomposed into the targets of its individual components based on the results of the bill of materials or material requirement planning. Subsequently, some methods for reducing cycle time are introduced, including more efficient job scheduling, yield improvement, controlling production conditions, 3D printing, leveraging cloud manufacturing capabilities, pull manufacturing, value stream mapping, and lean six sigma. Obviously, cycle time can be reduced in all aspects of system planning, control, and management. Finally, this chapter also provides numerical examples to illustrate the application of these cycle time reduction methods and discusses their potential effects.