Читать книгу Supply Chain Management For Dummies - Daniel Stanton - Страница 65

Manufacturing operations focus on maximizing the amount of product that they’re able to make in a given period. Sometimes, manufacturing processes need to be shut down. Planned shutdown times typically are based on the shifts that people work. Planned shutdowns may also occur so that the company can perform maintenance or change over equipment to make different products.

Unplanned shutdowns also happen for a variety of reasons, all of which are bad. An unplanned shutdown could be caused by a power outage, a broken piece of equipment, a strike, or a new government regulation. An unplanned shutdown also can be the result of running out of raw materials. You can’t make a product unless you have the components that go into it.

The other kinds of unplanned shutdowns are hard to predict and control, but you can easily prevent shutdowns due to a lack of raw materials by maintaining inventory. As a result, many manufacturing operations managers prefer to have extra inventory as an insurance policy — to make sure that they never run out of materials that would cause an unplanned shutdown. That extra inventory, of course, ties up working capital and eats up space.

Lean Manufacturing techniques help minimize the number of unplanned shutdowns caused by inventory stockouts while minimizing the amount of inventory in a supply chain.

One of the key elements of Lean Manufacturing is the use of a kanban for inventory replenishment. A kanban is an automatic reorder trigger for inventory. Containers can be used as kanbans to trigger inventory replenishment at each step in a supply chain, for example. When the last item is pulled from a container, it’s time to order a new container. This process provides a smooth, step by step flow of inventory. When you use a kanban system, there’s no way for inventory to be pushed down to the next step in a supply chain; it can only be pulled by the downstream kanban.

Toyota developed a unique approach to managing the flow of products through its manufacturing process, allowing the company to minimize inventory costs and unplanned shutdowns. This approach involves tools and techniques that are collectively known as the Toyota Production System. As other companies adopted this approach, it became known as the Lean Manufacturing technique because it reduces the inventory fat in a supply chain. Chapter 4 includes more information about Lean.