Learnings from this morning's JIT systems Game at Alliance Uty, Bangalore..

We did a dry run this morning at Alliance of the JIT systems game. Raw materials from two vendors supplying cups and A4 poster sheets with the accurate round slots for placing the round cups respectively were assembled by an operator whose job was to see that there was enough inventory of four units each of the different variants of raw materials and work in progress with him before pushing it to the final assembly area.

The assembly area had area to stock only four units ie. only four kanbans were working initially .. The no of output items are manufactured and kept as work-in-process inventory,   As and when items are taken by the upstream entity in response to a demand for them, items are assembled or built to fill up the output inventory stock.

The measure of inventory, RM, WIP and FG if any, is kept at each entity, the cycle time of the whole assembly line is noted for the first level of four kanbans.

The game is repeated with 3 kanbans and 2 kanbans resply. The inventory quantity is measured at each entity and the cycle time is noted.

The aim of the game is
1. to find the relationship between the inventory held ( number of kanbans) at each entity and the response time measured by means of cycle time of the line to respond to customer demand.

2. to find the relationship between the number of Kanbans and the number of good quality output.

The variability of customer demand necessitates forecasting of demand and hence provides an opportunity for the occurence of bullwhip effect.

The beer distribution simulation game was played as a periodic review model, while this game is a continuous review model.

A good description of this JIT game (push / Pull)  can be found here ..

The worksheet for noting the readings during the game can be downloaded here ..

george..