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OUR SPECIALTIES: KANBAN

Kanban is a Japanese word, meaning card. The card (or bin or leveling meter) holds information about a particular part number, and gives instructions to planners, buyers, suppliers, departments or cells to buy or make more material. Though Kanban is a Japanese word, it’s not a Japanese philosophy. Taiichi Ohno references Henry Ford as the kanban pioneer in his book “Toyota Production Systems.” (So, "kanban" is an American principle).

Kanban is a methodology of replenishing material and product based on your customer’s actions and demands. World class organizations use Kanban to trigger replenishment on manufactured and purchased material. Many companies feel that kanban won’t work in their environments. This is an old wives tale. Regardless of your customers ever changing demand, Kanban is still the safest, most effective method of producing and ordering materials. Not all items meet the requirements of kanban. To be a kanban item some important criteria needs to be met. There must be predictability in terms of demand, lead times and quantity, and the part must be repetitive.

 

>Click on a process below to read more about our individual specialties:

Performance measurements Value stream mapping Simulation training Kanban material replenish 5S Set-up reduction Baseline & benchmarking

Cellular manufacturing Root cause analysis Standardized work Visual factory Kaizen Process mapping Best practices