Automation.com Profiles Kanban
Thomas R. Cutler (www.trcutlerinc.com) authored a feature
article about Kanban in the October issue of Automation.com
(www.automation.com). 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.
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.
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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