Electronic Option For Lean Manufacturing

Lean manufacturing practices are helping businesses simplify supply chains, but companies still often rely on paper-based kanban systems to monitor inventory needs. Now, SupplyWorks Inc. has an electronic kanban tool that uses bar codes instead of printed paper cards containing replenishment information.

Kanban, the Japanese term for signal, establishes a pull instead of push system of moving goods through a factory. Cards, either printed or, in SupplyWorks' case, bar-coded, are used to signal the start of steps, such as raw-materials replenishment, that are monitored in reverse order (from shipping of goods to receiving of supplies) in a production line.

SupplyWorks' E-kanban system includes SupplyWorks MobileMax, an application that runs on a Microsoft Pocket PC with a Windows Mobile 2003 operating system and a SQL Server CE database, at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars for a typical implementation. A reader plugged into the mobile device reads bar codes off inventory in bins and then wirelessly transmits the data to the core SupplyWorks Max supply-chain application so that replenishment can begin when inventory falls below a certain level.

The E-kanban system will be available in early September. The vendor says its system is more cost-efficient than radio-frequency identification technology on the manufacturing floor, because RFID readers can't determine which RFID tags to read first when they're on bins that are close to one another. Says SupplyWorks' chairman Jeff Herrmann: "RFID works better on goods that are moving around, such as on conveyor belts."