Lean manufacturing, well known among large corporations, in fact most companies all over the world have implemented some form of lean manufacturing, no matter what their size is. A big part of lean manufacturing is the Kaizen and Kanban methods. But in lean manufacturing these methods cannot exist alone without total facility analysis and the implementation of the lean process in general. The Kanban means one thing that is visible, in Japanese and according to the best lean manufacturing system every product should be made as one until it reaches the customer but this is not very efficient in production methods. Still there are ways of implementing the system of “one” within the lean manufacturing system.
Even small businesses are implementing different forms of the lean system. The only problem is that they don’t have the funds to bring in a specialist to implement it into their business. What they do is attend a seminar or two and try to implement lean manufacturing into their business. Along with lean manufacturing, certain methods are included like Kanban and the kaissen method, but one method does not work without initiating the whole (lean manufacturing).
The first thing you want to do is form teams and preferably put as many members as you can who have been through a lean manufacturing course on each team. These teams are put in place so that communication is developed through them for everyone. The process begins with meeting and getting to know everyone in your group then you begin to train employees and then decide on what is the state of your business and how you can make it lean.
What areas you decide to integrate the lean process into your business depends on the overall analisys you have made. This corporate analysis will determine which areas need to be worked on, including departments like production, maintenance, sales engineering, shipping and administrative. The whole company should be analyzed. But the important thing is to start. You will need to make changes along the way and the process will continually grow with the company.
A method used within the lean process is KanBan which in Japanese means a visible thing, and this visible thing helps streamline the production of a product and changes many products into one product. This visible thing can take on the form of an electronic signal. It can even be a bin, a pallet, etc. In an ideal lean system you would produce a product in a quantity of one and follow it all the way to delivery to the client. But a company cannot just produce one product so the kanban takes the place of “one” by being one sequence, one bin of a certain quantity, one pallet of a certain quantity.
The kanban method helps you manage inventory or processes; they allow you to know what is in stock and what has been shipped very easily, because each kanban has a certain number of products within. Even when you use an electronic signal you know how many of a product is shipping and how many are produced. As an example, lets assume the kanban is an electronic signal and you are producing refrigerators. If you implement a signal for 20 refrigerators going through the installation of thermal insulation, then you know that the next production area receives 20 refrigerators, etc.
Kanbans help manage inventory. They let you know whats in stock and what has been shipped, and even what the projections need to be at. An ideal lean system would produce a product in a quantity of one. But in real life it is impossible to produce one product, and move it to the customer, so the Kanban takes the place of one. In other words, one bin, one pallet, one crate, etc.
Kanbans cannot really be implemented by themselves but need to be implemented into the whole lean system. Without better organization, and equipment utilization kanbans cannot work. The lean system in general works as a whole with certain specific methods that make the whole. You cannot have one without the other. So you cannot have kanbans without reviewing the whole lean system, just as you cannot have a lean system without the kanbans or the kaizen.