Apogee Mirror

Purpose of Kanban
There are four major purposes of kanban:

Prevent overproduction (and overflow) of material between production

processes.

Provide specific production instructions between processes based upon

replenishment principles.

Serve as a visual control tool for production supervisors to determine whether

production is ahead or behind schedule.

Establish a tool for continuous improvement.

Kanban:

Q1. Which products to hold in a finished goods inventory and

which to produce to
confirmed order?

ABC production analysis

Deciding about Finished Goods vs. Make-to-Order

hold?

Which products to

Q2. How much of each product should you hold in finished

goods?

Average demand per day using a three-month time span,

Cycle stock: how much should be in the inventory to account for the lost
in time a part.
Buffer Stock: If there is a surge in demand; using standard deviations.
Safety Stock: shortfall in production from downtime or quality losses. =
scrap + rework

Q3 How to organize and control the finished-goods store?

Place finished good items on shelf after scanning disrupted FIFO

VISUAL CONTROLS & WORKPLACE ORGANIZATION
o Signage
o Shelf allocated for old products
o Spreadsheet for finished goods inventory.
o Each part number is divided into 3 categories: cycle, safety and buffer
stock
o Authorization is required to touch safety and buffer stock

Inability to ship on time

Where to schedule the value stream
How to level production at this location
How to convey the demand to this location.
throughout the plant

Controlling production

Q4. Where to Schedule the Value Stream?

MRP needs to be continuously updated

MRP can be used for:

o Bill of Material
o Rough Cut Capacity Check
o Forecast information
o Tasks in production planning

Guidelines fir selection of a pacemaker process

o
o

A & B follows replenishment pull, so final assembly is the pacemaker

Have a inventory for part C before assembling

Q5. How will you level production at the pacemaker?

Point efficiency at each process step was producing much larger system
inefficiency in the form of inventory carrying costs, space requirements,
expediting of missing parts and general management overheads.

Work content differences between products

Work content is varied by a small amount

No product has work content above takt time

Changeover requirements between part numbers

Changeover times to zero

Production pitch interval

Q6. How to convey demand to the pacemaker to create

pull?

The use of Kanbans

o Use of Heijunka box
Conveyance operator who picks up products and places kanbans
Determining a conveyance route of 6mins 10 sec and
having a pitch of 9 mins, often nothing was available to
pick up so the pitch is increased to 18mins so that
products can be picked up.
Pitch:
o Creates continuous flow
o See if production is keeping up with schedule

Alternative heijunka Methods

Use withdrawal kanbans in market which prompts production kanbans

Controlling Production Upstream

Q7. How will you manage information and material flow

upstream from pacemaker?
This is due to the conflict between push and pull system

Create controlled markets fort A,B & C to buffer the flow and use withdrawal
kanbans to regulate the movements of parts between these markets and the
assembly cells.
o Spreadsheet listing every part used to assemble exterior mirror Plan
for every part
Move Material to Centralized Market Area and test conveyance
route to the pacemaker.

Q8. How will you size your markets and trigger withdrawal
pull?

Withdrawal Kanban
o What to deliver to assembly area

To successfully trigger pull

A. Set a standard amount of inventory of each part to hold at the
assembly cells based on the nature and frequency of the conveyance
route

Use of small bins

They calculated that about 10 containers would be required by the two cells
every 15 minutes and calculated that this would require 7 minutes and 50
seconds of work in addition to the four minutes of travel time between the
parts market and the cells.

With a 15-minute route, Apogee could store as little as 30 minutes of

inventory at the assembly cellsfar less than they had in the past.

Next Apogee determined what one hour of material equated to for every part
number at the cell. For some items it was one container (e.g., fasteners) and
for others several containers.

With a 15-minute route, Apogee could store as little as 30 minutes of

inventory at the assembly cellsfar less than they had in the past.

B. Create a separate withdrawal kanban for each container stored at

the cells.

Apogees exterior mirror parts withdrawal loop consisted of 30 different part

numbers with one hour of inventory for each resulting in one to six containers
for each stored line side.

The total number of withdrawal kanban in the loop for the exterior mirror
cells was 110 cards.

C. Determine the right amount of inventory to hold in the central

market.

Q9. How will you control batch processes upstream from

the pacemaker?

Scheduling
o Batch process with signal kanban

EOQ to determine the efficient size to run in production but this

based on machine utilization which minimized the number of
changeover.
Sequence signal Kanban
Determining time available for changeover work
Set the number of changeover per day
o include downtime, divide by changeover time
o Determine the maximum number of changeover
permitted
Determine the production lot size
Fixed-time-variable-quantity method -based on demand for each
part
Running the same fixed quantity of parts for each part number
run
Specify a trigger point for reorder

The longest replenishment time for machine # 4 therefore is 404 minutes, since
that is the longest lead time possible before replenishment of the next part
number can begin.

Q10. How will you expand your level pull system across
the facility?

Through all value streams in the company

value-stream rollout
o

Since the exterior-mirror value stream improvement effort had

taken approximately eight weeks to date and much of the elapsed
time was learning the logic of the new system, they assumed the
remaining value streams could be accomplished in no more than
four months (for a maximum implementation time of six months).

departmental rollout
o

Other members of the team instead proposed a departmental

rollout, converting all the batch processes, then attacking all the
remaining assembly cells and finished-goods areas at once, and
finally targeting the central markets. Both approaches have their
merits, as summarized in the table below.

Apogee chose departmental rollout approach because it would:

o

Prevent some machines, such as molding, from being pushed on some part
numbers while being pulled on others.

Allow the team to immediately address the big problem areas of supplying
material from molding and paint to assembly and quickly help improve ontime delivery to customers.

Make it possible to combine material handling across cells and value streams,
capturing full benefits more easily.

Q11. How will you sustain your level pull?

Monitoring
o Customer demand
o The amount of inventory to hold
o Average demand change
Assessments of performance metrics: scrap rates, changeover time and
downtime
o Who is responsible?
o How often do you need data
o What process is not stable
o What needs improvement point kaizen
Daily supervision
o
o
o
o
o
o
o

Is production ahead or behind schedule?

Are inventory levels above or below normal?
Are machines producing to cycle time?
Is assembly producing to takt time?
Do we have the right number of resources in place?
Are defects occurring and escaping downstream?
Are suppliers delivering on time?

Q12. How will you improve your level pull system?

o