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02/22/2006 03:36 PM
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I've been working through Art Smalley's Creating Level Pull workbook, and find it very useful in understanding setup of kanban systems. However, I'm left with two unanswered (if perhaps somewhat minor) questions:
1. Is there any significance to the triangular shape for triangle kanban? Or is it just a randomly chosen shape to differentiate from normal in-process kanban?
2. The kanban are often "put on a rail" (bottom of page 62). What does this actually look like?
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02/27/2006 02:35 AM
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Hi,
I did not read the book, but hearing all this positive feedback about it, it gets higher and higher on my "must-read" priority list.
I saw once some kanbans, that were made deliberately in a shape / size, that they would not fit into an operator's pocket... because if they would, then chances would be high, that the operator forgets them in his pocket instead of returning them to where they belong.
I don't know, whether this is the case, but I could imagine this as a reason for having triangular kanbans.
Regards,
Josef
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02/27/2006 05:13 PM
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(I asked Creating Level Pull author Art Smalley for a response, which follows. -Moderator)
1. The shape of the traingle is not important. It originally was made in this shape because Toyota made them out of offal - the remaining material after certain blanks were put through a punch press. There was not enough material left over to make them square so the traingle shape was adopted...(Toyota was too cheap and poor at the time to do anything else! I'm sure Mr. Ohno rejected some poor soul's request to make it out of something else)
2. The rail is just a metal rail of some sort. Some angle iron or anything plain is fine. Just needs to be strong enough to hold a few pounds of traingle kanban or whatever the weight is...and of course some way to mount it to a board or wall. It should be angled a few degrees enough so that the kanban will natural slide down the rail and maintain the sequence they are put on the board.
Sincerely,
Art Smalley
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04/03/2006 05:25 PM
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I have attached a photo of a signal kanban board that I once made. We used scrap coil aluminum cut into 9" pieces and bent to hang on a tote or basket. Simple to make, effective and hard to loose.
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Note: These forums are moderated by the Lean Enterprise Institute. All posts are reviewed prior to appearing on the site. Views expressed in these forums do not necessarily represent the views of the Lean Enterprise Institute.
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