The Pacific Scientific HTL e-Kanban Transformation

Pacific Scientific HTL, an internationally renowned maker of aerospace safety equipment and military defense hardware, adopted lean manufacturing several years ago in an effort to reduce inventory levels and increase the speed of product through their plants. A key component of their lean journey was to institute a kanban system that would govern the flow of materials from their suppliers and through their facility. While visual cues governed their internal production kanban system, fax releases signaled their suppliers. After a year and a half of using the paper fax release system, it was clear that it simply didn't scale for PS/HTL's 100-plus suppliers, more than 100 fax numbers over 3500 parts on kanban, and 2000 signals sent each month. With numerous points of possible failure