For controlling production areas, especially when regarding machine intensive manufacturing processes with the help of a Kanban System, usually the so called “Signal-Kanban” will be used. To visualise the Kanban orders a classical manual Kanban Board is often in place.
For each part number a green, yellow and a red area is calculated. In the next step the consumed Kanbans will be manually placed into the Kanban Board, in order to visualise to the employee the order volume to produce next.
Such manual Kanban Boards are working very simple, but also have some disadvantages.
For example:
- Difficult handling when having a lot of part numbers, which must be produced at the same production machine or line
- No exact or dynamic priorisation of the Kanban parts, so that the employee exactly knows, what to produce next
- Problems when putting in Kanban cards into the false panel
- Slow flow of information, because of manual triggering of Kanban Signals
- Only limited possibilities, regarding productions-criterions like: same or similar parts, setting up of same parts, … etc. to move into production more controlled
An electronic Kanban solution like the IKS Kanban Board can eliminate or reduce these disadvantages and can evolve the advantages of a Kanban controlled area (Production-Kanban). In general the same principles are used, but all necessary information will be visualised in real-time as well as dynamic priorisation helps, to control your production more efficiently.