TR Cutler Profiles Kanban in Automation.com
Thomas R. Cutler (www.trcutlerinc.com) authored a feature
article about Kanban in the October issue of Automation.com
(www.automation.com). Paper kanban intent has efficacy; the
reality of cluttered transport routes, overflowing finished
goods stores, immense quantities of WIP (work-in-progress) and
unscheduled machine downtimes, often make the merits of this
lean manufacturing functionality questionable. When there are
also frequent complaints about delivery problems, the reality is
quite distant from the theory. Poor implementation of kanban is
quickly overcome in an e-kanban environment. Kanban is a visual
signal that something needs to be replenished. Lean
Manufacturers today use Kanban to drive a process to make, move,
or buy the appropriate parts. Thus, Kanban becomes one of the
fundamental building blocks of a pull (or consumption based)
replenishment system. No card? No Replenishment.
Sue Via, Senior Project Engineer with TechSolve
(www.techsolve.org) suggests that Kanban is only part of the
lean process, "Kanban is a higher order concept and many things
must be in place before implementation of the concept is
feasible. For instance, the foundation of Standard Work,
5S/Visual Management, and Quality at the Source must be in place
and functional. All affected processes should go through an
initial lean transformation to eliminate waste, establish Flow
and initiate a Pull mindset. All processes including equipment
must be reliable in order to minimize the inventory
requirements."
Two of the primary limitations of a manual (or paper based)
Kanban system are data availability and scalability. According
to Justin Diana, VP of Datacraft Solutions
(www.datacraftsolutions.com), "In a typical manual Kanban
implementation, most transactions and orders are placed with
faxes and emails and recorded in an Excel spreadsheet. At the
end of the day, this information is limited to the individual
managing and recording this data. The individuals responsible
for growing and improving the process, have limited or no
visibility to the data. As the number of parts, suppliers, and
cells grow, managing this process only becomes more convoluted."
Datacraft Solutions www.datacraftsolutions.com Matthew Marotta
800-819-5326
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