Supermarket

In my last post I looked at the behavior of the supermarket inventory for different kanban systems. In this post I will use this information to estimate how much the material availability of a system changes if you increase or decrease the inventory limit of your pull system (i.e., number of kanban).

Parts of this blog post are loosely based on chapter 13.2 of my new book All About Pull Production: Designing, Implementing, and Maintaining Kanban, CONWIP, and other Pull Systems in Lean Production.

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Setting up a kanban system is tricky, especially determining the number of kanban. The kanban formula is at best a rough estimate. It is usually advisable to adjust the number of kanban as the system is running. In general, if you have too much inventory, reduce the number of kanban. If you run out of material – and the cause is a lack of kanban – then increase the number of kanban. However, this general recommendation can be refined a bit by looking at the supermarket inventory. Let me show you how to improve your kanban system by analyzing your supermarket inventory.

This blog post is loosely based on chapter 13.2 of my new book All About Pull Production: Designing, Implementing, and Maintaining Kanban, CONWIP, and other Pull Systems in Lean Production.

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The kanban formula (or estimation) helps you determine the number of kanban. All of these should fit in the supermarket, hence the maximum in the supermarket represents all kanban. Many supermarkets also have a minimum inventory level. Unfortunately, there is little information on how to set the minimum. Time to take a deeper look on how to set and use the minimum level in the supermarket. In this first post I will look at how to use a minimum level in a supermarket. The next post will look at how to determine a good minimum level.

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