Aid to failing memory

[Frank S]

Kanban or in the near western world's description pretty much amounts to queue limitation control and in my opinion is probably where the just in time low or non stockage delivery system got its start. Which can work great as long as everything functions according to the master plan, especially where there is no in house manufacturing This would be where the 3 bin system would come into play where 1 bin would be on the floor for manufacture the 2nd bin would be in the manufacture's shipping department while the 3rd would be the out for delivery to the end user.
there are some corporations who have perfected the system to the point of prediction when a given item will require replacing right down to the thought to be predictable habits of the end user
Toyota for example can just about predict how many parts for any given type of vehicle will need to be replaced due to traffic accidents in any given sales area how long said vehicle will be out of service from the time of the accident till the time the user is behind the steering wheel again. taking into account every conceivable best and worst case scenario.
For a small business owner / manufacture and particularly the job shops, the kanban system often is not the most optimum way to approach their solutions since they almost certainly never have the ability to have every conceivable item they will need in the system Also the need for randomly purchasing in small quantities drives their cost of doing business up. on the other hand buying 100 of an item that may or may not be needed again for quite some time, while they may have saved money initially and at times managed to actually reduce the total end cost of manufacture per each of the few special production items . They are now faced with a surplus inventory which must be cataloged stored or liquidated. Often liquidation by means of selling off the excess quantities of parts proves to further reduce the cost of manufacture, rather than maintain an inventory thus raising their Dollars per square foot of floor space per hour value significantly