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Standard working. Defined by the operator, not the industrial engineer, it is a prescribed sequence of production steps done by one operator and balanced to the required rate of demand. It becomes the basis of understanding the job and therefore what can be improved. Visual controls. Characteristic of JIT factories are simple visible controls, held locally where they are used to monitor key performance indicators and used as a spur to improvement. This is a deliberate attempt to give eyeball control rather than the oversophistication provided by remote computer systems. Examples include: •
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Standard container sizes replacing irregular sizes such that stockholding is a simple question of counting containers rather than the parts within them. The reorder point in this case is a chalk mark on the wall rather than it being hidden in a computer system and appearing on a reorder report the following morning. The graphs of quality, productivity, safety and delivery performance updated daily and discussed at the daily stand-up meeting. A small segregation area for quality defects kept deliberately small to ensure that problems are solved quickly and rejects are not allowed to accumulate. The flip chart to write down today’s problems while they are still fresh.
Minimizing inventory, Minimizing Work in Process, and synchronizing production by the use of replenishment systems such as Kanban. The principle of Kanban operation is extremely simple but there are a number a detailed considerations to make in design and implementation which are not trivial including: • • • • • • •
Positioning of buffers Buffer sizing Signaling mechanisms Prioritization of signals Priming the system Accounting aspects Ongoing integrity of cell design
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