Category Archives: Inventory

Effect of Prioritization on Waiting Times

Inventory, ,

Prioritizing one part over others is an easy way to speed up the production of the prioritized part. However, if too many parts are prioritized, the performance of the others will suffer.

My general recommendation is to prioritize no more than 30% of your production volume. In this post I will look in more detail at this relation and verify this assumption (TL;DR: this is correct!). This post is based on a masters thesis by my student Yannic Jäger. Continue reading Effect of Prioritization on Waiting Times →

Twelve Ways to Create Space around Your Assembly – Part 2

Inventory,

The spaces around your assembly locations are most precious. In my previous post I explained how to relocate or reduce the overall material quantity. In this post I focus on how to better use the area facing the worker. Ideally, all material should be within easy reach of the worker. Continue reading Twelve Ways to Create Space around Your Assembly – Part 2 →

Twelve Ways to Create Space around Your Assembly – Part 1

Inventory,

Assembly needs lots of parts. Especially if you have larger parts, you may find that you are running out of space to put them. Fear not, there are a number of things that you can do to solve this problem. This post will present you with all the solutions (that I know) to remedy a space shortage in assembly. Continue reading Twelve Ways to Create Space around Your Assembly – Part 1 →

Structured Approach to Material Supply for Assembly – Part 1

Inventory,

Supplying material for assembly operations can be quite a challenge. After describing the challenges in the previous post, I would like to show you in two posts what you need to consider when you want to create an assembly location. This is a somewhat structured approach on how to set up a material supply for your assembly operations, although you will still need some iterations to achieve a good solution. After that I will have a post focused on what to do if you are running out of space at your assembly location. Continue reading Structured Approach to Material Supply for Assembly – Part 1 →

The Challenges of Material Supply for Assembly

Inventory,

Assembly of multiple parts into one bigger part is a common process in manufacturing. It is also the most challenging one for supply logistics. If there is only one part that gets milled, drilled, coated, formed, or other wise processed, logistics is much easier. But if you have dozens or hundreds of parts that have to come together in different variants, it becomes much more of a challenge. In this post I will look at the challenges of supplying material for assembly. In subsequent posts I will show ways to address these challenges. Continue reading The Challenges of Material Supply for Assembly →

How to Deal With Long Delivery Times

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Lean has a bunch of advanced but good tools for material delivery, like Just in Time, Just in Sequence, and Ship to Line. Using them is much easier on short distances and with short delivery times. Yet, sometimes you just don’t have the option of short delivery times. This blog post deals with the issues related to long lead times and delivery times. Continue reading How to Deal With Long Delivery Times →

How to Determine Your Lot Size – Part 3

Inventory, Lean Tools,

This is the third and final post on lot sizes (Part 1 and Part 2). After considering all the factors of the processes and inventories (changeover time, batch size, customer order size, and container and shipment size), we now look at how to set up the information flow. This is especially important if we want to have different lot sizes in different sections of our value stream. Continue reading How to Determine Your Lot Size – Part 3 →