How can we focus on ‘pull’ and ‘flow’

In this paragraph we will describe how we can put the focus on pull and flow which will result in a new scheduling system. To get the focus on pull and flow we will introduce the ‘Kanban planning schedule’. “Kanban is a simple way to organize your work and to focus on the most value adding tasks. Kanban prevents being very busy without booking any results” (Greaves & Laing, 2018) The most important principles are:

1. Visualize your work

2. Limit the amount of Work-In-Progress and create a system in which team members can pull the work instead of pushing it

3. Create flow

4. Make explicit appointments 5. Improve together as a team

Taking into account these principles results in the new scheduling system as shown in figure 5.3. We will first describe the system and then describe how the 5 principles come back into the system.

The template as shown in figure 5.3 should be expressed on a white board which will be placed on a strategic point on the shop floor. All of the different production steps are illustrated onto the new scheduling system and additionally the warehouse is added. Production orders are expressed on tickets which can be placed in the boxes on the whiteboard. The planned production orders are placed on the left side of the white board. There will be a limit on the number of orders that can be picked in the warehouse which is shown under ‘ready for SMD’. Every department will have a limit on the number of orders allowed in the department, which should be determined by trial and error.

If the limit of a department is not reached yet and there is an empty production step in a department, the employee can pull a production order from an earlier production step. Which will be demonstrated in the example below. We took the first 3 steps of the scheduling system and we assume that the production orders at AOI do not finish during this example.

1. Starting situation 2. 2 orders are ready for SMD

5. 6. Another order from SMD is finished, but the limit is reached, so the machine will stop and no orders can be pulled anymore (bottleneck found)

In the 6th _{step of the example the limit is reached and now the operators have to realize that they found a} bottleneck. If they continue with producing at the SMD line the queue for AOI will become bigger and bigger, which we want to avoid because of the waste it creates. Instead, the operators of line 1 can search for ways to decrease the cycle time at AOI and create more flow. If this is done every time a bottleneck is found we can improve the supply chain on a regular basis.

We will now explain how the 5 principles of Kanban are covered in the scheduling system:

1. Visualize your work.

The planning system is expressed on a whiteboard, so that everybody can see in a blink of an eye how we are doing. You can see if we are on track, where the bottlenecks are and how much work there is left for a certain time period.

2. Limit the amount of Work-In-Progress and create a system in which team members can pull the work instead of pushing it.

Those two concepts are explained in the example above. Limits are created and the different departments can pull work to their workstations if they have time and space.

3. Create flow.

Flow is created because we made one planning system of the whole (intern) supply chain. Besides bottlenecks need to be tackled to make the flow smoother over time.

2 orders of SMD are finished and ready for AOI, and SMD pulled 2 orders from the warehouse again

4. Make explicit appointments.

Appointments need to be made about the limits in each of the department. If the operators do not adhere to the appointments the system will not work and we are back at the beginning. Furthermore, appointments need to be made about how to improve and tackle the bottlenecks, which is the next principle.

5. Improve together as a team.

Once the bottlenecks are found there should be teams who tackle them and improve the supply chain by themselves. This is one of the biggest challenges of the whole system, because people need to be trained and triggered in the right way. A lot of people have an 8 to 5 mentality and just want to do their work without improving the processes.

We can conclude that we covered most of the principles of Kanban and created a system that could possibly work. But, it is not that easy, because the system contains a lot of challenges before we can actually implement it. Those challenges will be covered in the next part of this chapter.