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Kanban System

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Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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  • July 31, 2012 at 11:59 pm #54132

    amy lee
    ★ 20 Years ★
    Guest

    currently i am facing a proble, where the planning and purchasing department quarreled over the shortage of stocks in purchasing. They are using the MRP system. My question is, is the Kanban System suitable in solving this problems, where many components are involved.

    Thanks for all the suggestions.

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    August 6, 2012 at 6:46 am #193862

    Russell Lindquist
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Participant

    Ms. Lee,

    Like most things the answer is, “it depends.” Kanban systems are very effective to replenish supply but require knowledge of lead times, estimated consumption/demand quantities and pretty reliable delivery of the supply. I can only speak from experience but having thousands of components or more in a kanban system can work just fine, although I haven’t done one with millions of SKUs. MRP planning usually does worse when the above information is not accurate or demand cannot be statistically planned. Both systems suffer in low demand situations and tend to drive to higher inventories. There are a few alternatives but email me separately and we can discuss further if you would like.

    —Russell

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    November 8, 2012 at 12:11 am #194307

    Lucas Xu
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Participant

    Use aggregated Kanban than item level Kanban will help you to solve this problem.For purchasing dept., they don’t need to worry about the detail but a macro raw material demand, for planning dept., they should summarize and show the demand forecast with Sales and product manager.Kanban is used in “make to stock” bussiness mould, if your company is “make to order” mould, you need to analyze the history based on sales forecast if raw material lead time is long, Kanban is not available in “make to order” mould.

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    November 17, 2012 at 12:36 pm #194348

    Rahmat Ali Khan
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Participant

    I think Safety stock based on realistic forecasting is necessary, don’t think Kanban aims just at zero inventory.

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    November 20, 2012 at 6:17 am #194368

    Stoke Prior Andy
    ★ 20 Years ★
    Guest

    Amy, take a look at the tools available on the Juran site. I think they will help and you can reach their site via the “Revitalise your Organisation” link on this page. They have a really useful Kanban template.

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    November 20, 2012 at 2:39 pm #194380

    Chris Seider
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Participant

    IMHO, kanban application within a facility is one of the LAST tools to help a lean environment.

    Gather data on what the majority of understocks are, and find out lead times, varying usage rates, and average usage rates and see if you need to change average stock levels. If this information is wrong, even if you used kanbans, you’d run out of stock.

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    November 20, 2012 at 9:08 pm #194384

    Nitin Dixit
    ★ 10 Years ★
    Participant

    Agree with Chris. Demand pattern (Vol varience, mix varience, lead time) and supply reliability (inter consignment time, lead time and their variability) an quality reliability are the first things to determine.
    @amylee do consider that creating a pull is the fourth principle of lean and is useful after value stream and Flow are addressed.

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