The traditional approach for regulating production, which is still in wide use, is that each process in a value stream gets a schedule. These schedules are based on predictions of what the downstream processes will need in the future. Since […]
It is a misconception, perhaps stemming from the pull system idea, that Toyota assembles vehicles in the same order in which customers buy them. Someday Toyota would like to have achieved that kind of 1×1 flexibility in its production operations […]
Let us begin by looking at two processes: one without 1×1 flow and one with 1×1 flow. The assembly process depicted below has four workstations, and one operator at each one. There are small quantities of inprocess “buffer” inventory between […]
Takt time is the rate of customer demand for the group, or family, of products produced by one process. Takt time is used most often at assembly-type processes that serve external customers. Takt time is calculated by dividing the effective […]