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03/28/2006 05:09 PM
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We are relatively new to Kanban and have started simply with cards in a two bin system. I have a question about how to handle situations where we are builing an assembly and we wind up short of a component. (The shortage could be for any reason, vendor missed delivery date, or we made the mistake). What happens is the demand continues as customer orders are received, however the remaining components are not pulled due to stoppage og production of the assembly. Once the part comes in and we restart - everything else experiences a "rush in demand" and the shelves all seem to run low simultaneously. I know we ae not the only manufacturer to have parts shortages. There must be a common practice for handling this situation in a Kanban environment. I have not found anything in literature, everything seems to say you have to have reliable vendors, etc. We have yet to find the perfect vendor, so I'd like to at least gain better visability to the impending rush on other parts. Can anyone help?
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03/30/2006 02:39 AM
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The long term goal should be to solve the root cause, why Your vendors/internal departments don´t supply reliably. However, on the short term, before You can make big changes, You might carefully add a limited amount of safety stock to cover variations... but this should not be the final solution, You should not stop working with the vendors towards stable deliveries.
In my view, the advantage of kanban systems are, that they cause pain/trouble, if there are shortages. The pain/trouble forces the attention to solve the problem. If You have a too large buffer of safety stock, then You never feel the pain/trouble and never see the need to solve the root causes of the problems.
Regards,
Josef
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03/30/2006 10:00 AM
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Daniel,
It is difficult to tell exactly what the cause of your problem is, but here are some suggestions.
1. Your kanbans may be too large. When you increase consumption and you start trying to move too many parts through your system at once, you get bottlenecked and can't get replenishments back out quickly enough. Decrease your kanban quantities, but make sure you are ready to attack set up times. Long setups also bottleneck you, and you will have the same result from a different cause.
2. If you are using 2 batches of finished parts in a grocery store without WIP, try going to 1 kanban in the grocery store and keep another kanban batch at each job step from raw materials to finished part, instead. Your inventory will go up a little, but your lead time will go way down. This will make an immediate difference, but you should follow up with batch size reduction and setup reduction, to get your inventory back down.
Good Luck!
Blake
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