The demand driven approach to inventory buffer sizing is very similar to the Lean approach with two clear differences. The Demand Driven approach flexes inventory buffers according to dynamic demand and it is a multi-echolon approach that takes account of factors such as inventory positioning. In 2011 Carol Ptak and Chad Smith, both long time … Read more
The Lean ethos is that all inventory is evil. “Inventory is one of the 7 wastes so it must be bad!” Yes it is bad if it is hiding waste such as over-production or under-production. If, on the other hand, an inventory buffer is cost effectively protecting the customer from surges in external demand as … Read more
Lean manufacturing was developed using the Toyota Production System. Hence it is instructive for those working in the food & beverage industry to examine how food & beverage manufacturing is different when compared to car manufacturing. We have come up with 7 fundamental differences and would love to hear from you if you can think … Read more
The project is signed and it’s big and complicated! You’re not responsible for the total business outcome but the project sponsor has made it clear that you are responsible for Scope, Cost and Time (ie. until she says otherwise!). So what do you do with that? Vaguely you know that you should be thinking about … Read more
You know the signs, the factory keeps missing production schedules and you keep depleting finished goods inventory. Its now so bad that you are missing vital customer orders and some customers are threatening to delist. This is a common story and here we use a scenario based on actual events to illustrate how an understanding … Read more
Taiichi Ohno is the long accepted Japanese initiator of the western version of the Toyota Production System called Lean. There is growing recognition that his initial ideas, while powerful in an isolated context, were only a portion of his systemic view of a complex supply chain. In any case, history can now chronicle the rise … Read more
This is a tough question and if someone can provide a commonsense answer then they must know what they are talking about. Well here we go! To be relevant the calculation for an optimum order quantity should take account of 100 years of industrial engineering and operations research. So ….. below we review the 4 … Read more
Production variability and demand variability causes congestion in supply chains. One way to reduce this congestion is to reduce the variability by addressing its causes. Another and more subtle way to deal with congestion is by combining multiple sources of variability. This is known as variability pooling, and has a number of supply chain applications. … Read more
Production variability and demand variability causes congestion in supply chains. One way to reduce this congestion is to reduce the variability by addressing its causes. Another and more subtle, way to deal with congestion effects is by combining multiple sources of variability. This is known as variability pooling, and has a number of manufacturing and … Read more
Capacity decisions made at the time of asset procurement have a huge strategic effect on the long term competitiveness of a manufacturing operation. This is particularly true in the process industry where most of the factories use Flow Lines.
In this article we explain how flow lines are designed as well as the supply chain system benefits of un-balancing flow lines, i.e. adding extra capacity upstream and downstream of a flow line’s bottleneck.