Every single person in today’s world knows the name Toyota. It is not false if we say that the name Toyota has become synonymous with the word Car. Everyone longs to buy a Toyota and it has to be said that they have earned that. Today, Toyota is one of the top admired companies of the world and it has a magisterial reputation among the people. It is admired mainly due to its earth friendly cars and the main success of Toyota lies in a uncomplicated system called Kanban. This system was developed in the late 1940s when there was a huge recession in economy. This system was fancied to make sure that no parts are over produced during the production process. This yielded great success to them and they follow it even today.
It is also based on the JIT principle. JIT is the abbreviation for Just in Time. This is the principle of producing “What is needed, when it is needed, and in the number needed.” This system will surely reduce the wasting of products and will reduce the inconsistencies in production.
Kanban alone(p) means “visual cards” in Japan. So, it is a system of communicating with visual cards. Let us for instance say that you are in a car manufacturing companionship. This company is huge and it has various divisions. To assemble a full car, the parts have to run short at least 1000 meters. After the process is completed in one stage, a Kanban is placed over the completed part and it should contain the necessary details about the process which took place. This will be helpful for the assemblers at the next place.
This system is based on demand. So, if the assembling unit needs five parts, only five parts are produced by the manufacturing staff. They come to know that there is a demand for only five parts by the kanban they received. This method is really flexible and it is directly related to the demand so that there would be no wastage of parts.
There is a system called as the “three-bin” system for regions where there is no in-house manufacturing. So the three bins are divided into three regions. The first one is coiffe at the factory where the demand is notified, the second bin is at the storage place o f the factory where the materials are stored and the end bin is at the store where the products are stored. These bins contain cards which can be easily navigated. These bins will be used by the manufacturer, producer and the seller and this will eliminate confusednesss even in large production units 5s..
Now a day E-Kanban systems are also introduced. This system helps to fine tune the process in an even better way. There may be some errors made while manually entry the data on a Kanban. This might lead to some misunderstanding and confusion. So E-kanban will eliminate all those difficulties and it will function according to real time demand.