Question

The Sylva Machine Shop was implementing lean throughout their shop floor and needed to determine the number of containers at several of their work centers. In one such work center, the demand was 200 parts per hour, and the containers they used for this part held 50 parts. It normally takes 6 hours for a full container to make a circuit through the work cell and back to its input side, and they desired to carry 12% safety stock in the system.

1. How many containers should the lean system be using?
2. Calculate the maximum system inventory for this part.
3. If the required safety stock was changed to zero, how many containers should the lean system be using, all else being constant?
4. Based on the required safety stock of zero and the number of containers computed in part c, calculate the maximum inventory for this part.
5. Based on the required safety stock of zero and the number of containers computed in part a, what would be the new required round-trip time, all else being constant?
6. If the demand from the original data was changed to 250 parts per hour, how many containers should the lean system be using, all else being constant?
7. If the required round-trip time from the original data was changed to 5 hours, how many containers should the lean system be using, all else being constant?

Answer 1

In kanban system, kanban cards are placed on kanban board that act as a visual control and signaling system. The kanban system monitor the work in progress and does not pull the work and make it active without proper resources that is required to do that work. The aim of Kanban is to promote transparency in the workflow within the organization in order to make the employees and management aware of the process they are involved in and what is their role within the organization. In this way employees and management could improve their effort to make the entire process effective for the organization.