Principles and General Practices of the Kanban Method

Kanban is nothing but a scheduling system for lean manufacturing and Just in Time approach; this is just an inventory control system which enables the company to manage their supply chain. This is now used as a very effective tool for running the company’s production system. As this works on Just in time, there is no scope for wastage, nowadays Kanban for shop floor level has also begun to avoid any piling of stocks.

A very innovative example of Kanban is the three bin system; there are many more important techniques available in the market like five pillars of the visual workplace. One of the main areas of any business which requires a complete focus is operations, if one wants to improve then they can focus on autonomous maintenance for operator’s methodology.

Following are the general practices of the Kanban method

1. Visualize – a very important thing to be done is visualizing the required output by the company, and focusing on how to get it done using JIT, technique but for that you will need a strong supply chain.
2. Limit Work in progress – work in progress is one of the parts which consumes the maximum amount and space of the business and incurs a lot of cost as well, so one must make sure that they limit their work in progress inventory.
3. Manage the flow - the flow of the items at each stage should be monitored and measured from time to time and this is called as measuring flow, it helps to minimize risk and avoid the cost.
4. Make explicit policies – Explicit policies are the best, so one must make sure that they hold deep discussions and conduct brainstorming sessions to come up with the solution of these problems.
5. Implement feedback suggestions – there might be loop holes in every strategy, so using the Kanban technique one must implement the feedback and the suggestions given by the employees and fill in the loop holes of the production system.

So these are the 5 general principles of the Kanban method the companies should focus on.