KanBan Material Handling

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, which has been a worldwide phenomenon, South Africa and the South African economy has been particularly hard hit. At the time of writing, (7th April 2020) the South African rand has sunk to R18.36 to the US Dollar…a massive slide from our opening of the year position of R14.00 to the US Dollar. That’s a massive!

What are the implications for South African industry and the production environment?

In order to bounce back from this slide, as well as the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown, the South African industrial segment and production environments are going to have to come back even harder and smarter than before! As South Africans though, we’re used to getting tough, when the going gets tough!

Who can you partner with during these tough times to bounce back effectively?

S4, a leading South African automation company, has been providing solutions to the local and international market for over 25 years and have, over that time period implemented numerous Kanban systems to help increase the competitiveness of their client’s production lines! S4 have offered a wide range of solutions to meet each specific production environment’s unique needs and concerns!

Kanban systems are a type of Material Handling procedure, whereby control of logistical chains in production environments are used to increase efficiencies and reduce oversupply, thus reducing waste!

How does S4 achieve these objectives for their clients? By adhering to the 6 core practices of the Kanban method, namely:

1.      Visualize the flow of work:

This is the fundamental first step to adopting and implementing the Kanban method. You need to visualize – either on a physical board or an electronic Kanban Board, the process steps that you currently use to deliver your work or your services. Depending on the complexity of your process and your work-mix (the different types of work items that you work on and deliver), your Kanban board can be from very simple to very elaborate. Once you visualize your process, then you can visualize the current work that you and your team are doing.

2.      Limit W.I.P. (Work in Progress):

Limiting work-in-progress (WIP) is fundamental to implementing Kanban, which is a ‘Pull-system’. By limiting WIP, you encourage your team to complete work at hand first before taking up new work. Thus, work currently in progress must be completed and marked done. This creates capacity in the system, so new work can be pulled in by the team. Initially, it may not be easy to decide what your WIP limits should be, in fact, you may start with no WIP limits, and change this as your flow limits start to define themselves.

3.      Manage Flow:

Managing and improving flow is the crux of your Kanban system after you have implemented the first 2 practices. A Kanban system helps you manage flow by highlighting the various stages of the workflow and the status of work in each stage. Depending on how well the workflow is defined and WIP Limits are set, you will observe either a smooth flow within WIP limits or work piling up as something gets held up and starts to hold up capacity. All of this affects how quickly work traverses from start to the end of the workflow (some people call it value stream). Kanban helps your team analyse the system and make adjustments to improve flow to reduce the time it takes to complete each piece of work.

4.      Make Process Policies Explicit:

As part of visualizing your process, it makes sense to also define and visualize explicitly, your policies (process rules or guidelines) for how you do the work you do. By formulating explicit process guidelines, you create a common basis for all participants to understand how to do any type of work in the system. The policies can be at the board level, at a swim lane level, and for each column. They can be a checklist of steps to be done for each work item-type, entry-exit criteria for each column, or anything at all that helps team members manage the flow of work on the board well.

5.      Implement Feedback Loops:

Feedback loops are an integral part of any good system. The Kanban Method encourages and helps you implement feedback loops of various kinds – review stages in your Kanban board workflow, metrics and reports and a range of visual cues that provide you continuous feedback on work progress, or the lack of it, in your system. While the mantra of “Fail fast! Fail often!” may not be intuitively understood by many teams, the idea of getting feedback early, especially if you are on the wrong track with your work, is crucial to ultimately delivering the right work, the right product or service to the customer in the shortest possible time. Feedback loops are critical for ensuring that.

6.      Improve Collaboratively and Evolve Experimentally:

The Kanban Method is an evolutionary improvement process. It helps you adopt small changes and improve gradually at a pace and size that your team can handle easily. It encourages the use of the scientific method – you form a hypothesis, you test it and you make changes depending on the outcome of your test. As a team implementing Lean/ Agile principles, your key task is to evaluate your process constantly and improve continuously as needed and as possible.

By implementing an effective Kanban system and partnering with S4, backed by over 25 years industry knowledge and experience, your production facility can join the many others who are ready to get tough…as the going has already gotten tough!

For any further information on Kanban systems or how we can help you increase your competitiveness, please contact us at S4.

www.s4.co.za