Coincidently my experience this week ties in nicely to the last post. I have a couple of teams working to develop pull systems through their respective work areas. The conventional approach (I suppose) is a lot of PowerPoint about kanban, some exercises, developing a future state value stream map, then devising an implementation plan. An [...]
Bob Hanover has a great little article about applying visual controls to household laundry on his “Thoughtput Solutions” site. (cute way to use TPS as the name for the company, too.) The concept he outlines is the same one that is (or should be) used to trigger batch run points for kanban managed machines. But [...]
On the surface, a “two bin system” seems a great, simple solution to a part resupply process that could otherwise get complex. And, on the surface, I don’t argue with that. But two-bin has some limitations. And because it is so simple to set up, those limitations are frequently not understood or taken into account. [...]
For kanban to work well, there has to be a solid foundation under it. That foundation is production leveling or heijunka. Before I get to far into this, though, I would like to point something out: At the mention of leveling, people who are only just learning about kanban will point out all of the [...]
The short story of assembly problems is lack of parts. Part shortages drive all kinds of waste, including: juggling the schedule; expediting; bigger lots or batches – and all of these things end up causing shortages later on in a self-reinforcing death spiral. So how did an assembly shop which built about 10 units / [...]
(Links updated Feb 24, 2010) Robert Johnston, now at the University of Melbourne holding the John Skarkey Chair of Information Systems and Organisation at the UCD School of Business in Ireland, did his PhD work at Monash University in Australia. His dissertation, “ The Problem With Planning” presents a thought provoking thesis. – Early robotics [...]
