At IMEC, our specialists are always looking for new ways to help our clients meet their operating challenges. Whether it’s developing a new service or adding a new dimension to an existing capability, it’s our mission to find the best solution to enable a manufacturer to be as productive and competitive as possible.
Feedback we recently received after a process improvement project led us to wonder if simulating a supermarket system would help strengthen our introduction to Lean Manufacturing as a component of our signature Continuous Improvement Series. While some computer programs can model production systems and Kanban, they do not lend themselves to the facilitation of group discussion and learning. The CI Series throughout Illinois and seized an opportunity to try a Kanban simulation as part of the program.
We created a case study to augment our Pull/Kanban training which allows participants to design a Kanban system and then simulate the flow of supermarket containers through a manufacturing process.
Then we added the Kanban simulation to the Pull/Kanban module of the CI Series. It begins with this statement:
The company you work for has purchased a product line of metric and SAE sockets from a company in receivership. It includes in-process and finished goods inventory as well as the equipment required to manufacture the sockets. You were lucky enough to hire some key operations staff from the bankrupt company. They have provided invaluable information on the fabrication of the sockets.
Your president wants you to absorb this product line into an existing plant. He does not want to control inventory using MRP, but would like to institute a finished goods supermarket. Your job is to design the finished goods supermarket as well as any other supermarkets that may be required to meet customer demand.
The participants were asked to work on the design of the Kanban, while the IMEC team facilitated the discussion and helped perform design calculations. In order to simulate the movement of containers of parts through the manufacturing process, participants assumed roles of production workers running various processes and replenishing the finished goods supermarket. They were asked to determine when to begin selling the product based on the fact that they started with a number of stock-outs. Product was moved from process to process based on the number of parts in each container as sized by the Kanban and the time taken to process each part.
About 4 weeks of production were simulated before we stopped and debriefed. We determined that, while simulation does help CI Series participants see how a supermarket works, there are still a few elements to perfect before the Simulation is ready for widespread utilization.
We are encouraged by what we have done and are continuing to work on the simulation in order to present an improved version to our clients at the next opportunity. If you have ideas for us, please let me know.
