Overview of Kanban at Xerox

Business901 Podcast Transcription

Implementing Lean Marketing Systems

Kanban at Xerox Corporation

Copyright Business901

Michael P. Curry is a Materials Manager for

Worldwide Manufacturing Operations at Xerox Corporation. He leads an organization responsible for configuration, planning and purchasing in support of printer products built at Xerox in Webster, NY. He has 15 years of management experience with Xerox in positions such as Operations, Procurement and Materials/Logistics. Curry earned his BS from

SUNY at Fredonia, NY and his MBA in International Business from St. John Fisher College, in Rochester, NY. He holds a Green Belt

Certification in Lean Six Sigma and is a member of the Institute for Supply Chain Management.

Rob Piersielak was born in Rochester, NY. He received his BS in Industrial Engineering from Alfred University, and his M.S. in Engineering and Global Operations Management from Clarkson University. He is a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and is currently a Master Black Belt candidate. Over his 20 year career at Xerox

Corporation, Mr. Piersielak has had numerous positions throughout the supply chain, all focused on process improvement and design. He lead projects redesigning manufacturing plants and warehouses in seven different countries, was part of the Global Just In Time Manufacturing

Kanban at Xerox Guests were Michael Curry & Rob Piersielak of the Xerox Corporation

Related Podcast: Kanban at Xerox Corporation

http://business901.com/blog1/kanban-at-xerox-corporation/





Deployment team, and also lead the manufacturing team in rapid Time to Market product delivery project that delivered benchmark TTM results for Xerox. He is currently responsible for worldwide Supply / Demand and Order Fulfillment for the company’s flagship product, the iGen press, and is also responsible for Webster Manufacturing Materials Logistics Operations.

Joe Dager: Thanks everyone for joining us. This is Joe Dager,

the host of the Business901 Podcast. Participating in the program today is Michael Curry and Rob Piersielak of the Xerox Corporation. Could you both take the time and just give me a brief overview of your position at Xerox? Michael, would you start?

Michael Curry: Thanks, Joe. As a materials manager here in Webster Manufacturing Operations, I'm responsible for an organization that handles the configuration, planning, and purchasing for parts that go into the products that are built primarily here in Webster, but also at some of our other satellite

locations.

Rob Piersielak: This is Rob Piersielak. In my role at Xerox, I wear two different hats. Hat one is for our flagship color production press called iGen. I'm responsible for global supply/demand and order fulfillment. I'm responsible for the supply chain for that product. The other hat I have is for our manufacturing plant here in Webster, New York. I'm responsible for all material logistics operations, warehouse, docks, material movement, truckers, etc.

Joe: I was interested in having a podcast on the use of the more traditional forms of Kanban, and I appreciate the two of you volunteering. Rob, could you explain to me on what prompted Xerox to start using Kanban?





Rob: In the early 1990s, there was an initiative called the Just-In-Time Transition Council. And that was basically a team of folks who were chartered to understand the Toyota production systems and deploy the philosophies contained within those into Xerox. Kanban was one of the many tools that we started to use. The initiative, as part of our overall control system, was to reduce, initially, dock to dock, cycle time, and then alternatively, cash to cash cycle time.

Joe: You've been using it for 15-18 years?

Rob: Yes. I've been with Xerox for 20 years, and it's been part of my everyday life, no matter what job we've had.

Joe: I know you use Kanban in the manufacturing and your supply chain, what's one of the better things in Kanban, overall, that you have used?

Rob: I'd say probably from three different flanks. One is speed and agility, and our ability to rebuild many different types of

products. And they're very complex. So we're able to model mix and change from one type quickly because we don't have a lot of inventory on the floor. I'd say secondly, from an overall inventory dollar perspective, every year, we bring down our total investment in inventory down considerably, just by minimizing them on the floor, establishing processes, and using tools like Kanban that allows us to do that.

Michael: Rob, building on your points, it really enables the flexibility as well as the inventory dollars in any of the model mixing that we're looking for. And then obviously, just in terms of the pure footprint that's required on our production floor, obviously that enables some of the requirement that we need there.





Rob: Joe, my third one was that as our manufacturing management team becomes much leaner, over the years, we've reduced significant amount of layers of management. Kanban enables us to have union members who are managing inventory levels...That are managing production levels and they do it solely on the Min-Max that we will establish for them. We explain to them the process, and I never need to get involved, unless of course they come to because there's a barrier or two to attain

more supply, or some other operational issue.

Joe: What have you found to be the biggest shortcoming?

Rob: For me, the shortcoming is you have to have an environment that is quick to respond to those issues that come to you. So if you speak in the metaphor of Just-In-Time, if you lower the water level of inventory, you're going to find rocks. And when you find those rocks, you need to take immediate action. And I find it's not always our culture, and some of our suppliers' culture to respond immediately. So if you have a pack multiple changes,

a quality problem, or some other issue that changes the parameters you've set, you need to respond quickly, else you will shut your line down.

Joe: I've always seen the river rocks showing, using that metaphor, when you do lower your working process. You see the problems, and you can deal with the variations easier because they're more apparent. Did you find that to be true when you installed Kanban?

Rob: Absolutely. Maybe the next level of that model is, sure,

you've lowered the water, and you get rid of the rocks that you're experiencing today. But then as you keep sailing along, a rock that wasn't there yesterday pops up, and you need to be quick. I know we're going to get into a couple of examples of what we do, but the message is that you can't just assume that you can





implement Kanban, and now it's in autopilot, and completely ignore it, and move on to other activities in your business.

Joe: A lot of people think that a manufacturer like a Xerox, probably has some clout with their vendors, they just shift that problem, when they use the Kanban, down to their suppliers. Do the suppliers use Kanban too? How is that relationship viewed?

Michael: I wouldn't call this shifting the problem, in the case of our external suppliers, Joe. This was obviously a deliberate design on our part to get a signal process in place for the larger, more complex assemblies that are required that go into the printing and publishing devices that we manufacture here. So it really wasn't the intent to shift the problem to a supplier as much as it was to enable the flexibility in the floor space that we needed here, and to get a good signal process in place with them.

I think it's worked. I think our suppliers would say it's worked quite well with them too. If you have a moment, I'll spend a little

bit of time and give you some examples of the process, if it helps give a visual.

Joe: I think that would be great because that's always one of the questions, and I have another question to follow up on that. But a couple of examples now would be excellent.

Rob: Joe, before Michael's example, the one I'd like to build on is it's a collaborative effort. You don't just tell a supplier you're doing a Kanban. We tell our suppliers at a higher level what we're trying to accomplish, what we're doing, and why. We explain to them our pinch points, our process issues, and constraints, and we learn theirs as well. And what we've found ...Again, Michael will elaborate in examples is not only does it benefit us, but also it benefits the supplier because they can be aware of our needs. They anticipate any issues that we may have because they have things like shutdowns and they're own vacation and ANL issues as





well to manage. And because they are aware of it, and we have done that collaborative process, they can have a much more efficient operation as well, and not have their internal issues impact our production.

Michael: I think they would say that it's been a real benefit to both of us on those fronts. To cite a few examples of how we deal externally with the suppliers outside of our four walls, I'm going

to give just a couple of them. There's an assembly that's rather large in size, to give you an idea let's say that it's certainly bigger than a breadbox but not bigger than the size of your desk. But it's a good size assembly that's required to go into the machine that we produce for our customers around the globe here.

Those assemblies are on carts that are staged in our work-in-process area on that production shop floor. We are typically holding approximately two carts, maybe three carts, per day in that area. In that traditional Kanban process, when those carts become empty, they are immediately moved from the

production floor to the shipping dock and sent to our external suppliers for replenishment.

There are two deliveries a day typically. So there's an external dock that's taking those empty carts to our suppliers, and on return, they are coming back with replenished carts with the assemblies on them that are required from us.

The signal obviously is the empty cart. They also get a production purchase order which is at the larger scope for "Here is what we think we will need for those assemblies" and perhaps based on

the leave time of the assembly that's going out four to eight perhaps even 12 weeks out, in terms of the overall purchase order. But the signal itself is a combination of the empty cart that the supplier receives, and in some cases, a weekly bill schedule that the supplier receives directly from Xerox.





Joe: He is actually being furnished with a forecast but the actual physical movement of materials based strictly on Kanban?

Michael: Right. And as you can imagine, there are multiple configurations of that same assembly that are required, depending on the customer and/or geographic location of the product that we are building too. That same assembly may have slightly different variations, hence, why it's critical to have just

the right amount of carts that are required to handle the flexibility that's required for the unique configurations inside of that assembly. So we have several examples like that on larger assemblies that we are dealing with our external suppliers. We also handle similarly packaging, the packaging that goes into and around our finished goods, and a lot of the corrugated that's required to build around those assemblies.

We have a similar process with our corrugated suppliers in the area. That triggers based on a signal of that same type of requirement, so that we can have that flexibility to build a

product when we need it, and have the corrugated available to package and ship it to our customers.

Those are a couple of the Kanban processes that we have in place with our external suppliers. Rob has offered to share with you a little bit more about some internal processes that we have.

Rob: Internal to the manufacturing plant, we also use Kanban in many different areas. A couple of key examples would be, one, as you may be aware, Xerox for many years has been very diligent about asset reuse and recycling. When a printer or a copier gets

removed from a customer location, we call it affectionately "hulk". And we bring those back, and we will tear them down. We reuse parts, or we may do a re-manufacturing of the asset. We use the Kanban process within Maxis. We want to make sure that we have exactly what we need for our manufacturing production plant, not too much, not too little.





We've now established a process. We have a person, who manages this, and their entire job is to make sure that for each product code that we re-manufacture, we have exactly the quantity we need for the next week's production plan.

Secondly, I'd say an example of where management resources can benefit from use of Kanban is our products, as you can imagine, they use custom pallets, due to the dimensions of our

product and the weight. The pallets are quite expensive. Under the vein of recycling, we get back as many from the field that we can get. Occasionally, we do have to purchase new.

It took some time to implement, but now we have in place a process where a member of my union team, we've set up a Kanban based on height and based on the different types of skids that we have, this person, when it gets to the min point, works with the field to get pallets returned. If the fields run out of that particular type of pallet, they work with the buyer to get a purchase order cut.

We have a very short lead time for the new pallets, and then we get those skids in. so, for all the pallets we use for our products now, we never have to worry about running out, never have to worry about having too much. Because of the progressive nature of scanning the field for return pallets, we're spending very little. Fortunately from an environmental aspect, it's great because we're buying very few pallets.

I'd say a third area internally is, if you can imagine the nature of our products, they're quite large, and so we're trying to minimize

our floor space. I have an area that's dedicated to creating kits, like one example would be panels that go around our printers.

So this group...And again, complete self-directed union team, they work with manufacturing. They've established a Kanban location. They know what product that the line's going to be





building that day. They make sure, on the location, there's a kit of the panels required to scan those products. Then they'll be working today on the quantity required for tomorrow. Those inventory values that they have in the kitting area, they flow back to the buyer and to the supplier, so that we make sure that we have what we need but not too much.

Joe: When you read about it in a book it sounds perfect. You

just get a card and it flows. We know that isn't how it happens, real world. It's got to be managed. And Murphy rules: somewhere, something will happen to upset the apple cart. Where have you found the holes in your Kanban systems? Are there particular areas that always jump out at you, or is it different to each process that you instill a Kanban in?

Rob: I'd say on I already mentioned is, it's not cruise control; Murphy does live. So you need to be responsive. The downside of being lean is, when something does happen, you don't have a lot of time to react to it. So that is definitely the negative of lower

inventory. The other areas I would say that will bite you are, one, human intervention. Sometimes people feel empowered, sometimes for the right reason, to intervene and meddle with the Kanban system. It could be for things like, if they're going on vacation and they are worried they'll run out of parts, and they'll stock up. Anytime you get the human intervention altering your process; that will cause you problems.

Michael: Yes, I agree, both by design, Rob. So, by intent, I'd like to put a hedge in because I think I'd like to do something

slightly different, or I don't believe, perhaps, what the supplier's capable of doing. Or even in the case of when Murphy does come up, and that expected shipment didn't come in because there was a problem with the trailer that was bringing it in on a Thursday afternoon. But it does drive both us and the suppliers to accountability. So if you continue to put those hedges or those





manual mechanisms in place, you can argue you never get to really where you want to be in terms of the operational level both upper and lower control limits. So the problems do indeed come up but I think we are better off when we really let it run itself as opposed to putting the manual overlays in.

Rob: You really need to spend time educating the process participants involved and how the stacking points are calculated

and replenishment signals, and why to get them on board so that...And again, it is not...We have great people and people aren't evil. They are not doing the things with ill intent. Sometimes they will meddle and change things because they think they are really helping things. But they don't understand what they are trying to do and why. And what the good action that they believe they were taking could cause problems.

Joe: I think that is normal, just human character to fix something or sometimes that; we are not aware of what we are doing outside of our immediate area when we do that. Would you

call Xerox a lean company? Or do you follow the TPS production systems?

Rob: Yes. We definitely found many of our aspects of material production system. We have been practicing Lean since early 90's. I would say two of my direct reports...I think all but one are a greenbelt certified Lean Six Sigma and that person is undertaking...They are in the process getting certified. I have several people in the union in my organization that is greenbelt certified. So originally, it was from where the Malcolm Baldridge

Award and our leadership and quality that gave us the foundation to build upon. Now through Lean Six Sigma, you can...It is very common you will be walking into a team meeting or even an impromptu meeting on the floor. And you'll listen to the dialogue and they will be discussing non-evaluative activities and ways and defect level.





They may or may not have a graphic data to show up but you listen to the conversation. And as demonstrated by the daily work activities, I think that is the proof that it is a lean company.

Michael: It is not only on the existing work that we do. But as we continue to take on new work, new programs, new products that is always embedded into those assumptions as we launch a new program and it has become a new product. It is absolutely

ingrained in the work processes and the peoples work itself.

Joe: So for Kanban to work you basically follow standard work? I mean is there a standard work practice in the areas when you are talking about people making decisions that allow them to understand the Kanban system?

Rob: There are standard processes that people are not empowered to change the standard work process unless they use the appropriate change, process to change it. We want people to be enthusiastic and creative and as they discover areas for

improvement, they are encouraged to so, but they can't do it just 100-percent on their own. We are also ISO certified; our processes are documented and audited, so they are not free to change things on their own without following the appropriate change process.

Joe: I got a little side-tracked there but I was just kind of interested in that. But, back to the Kanban side. Do you find a need to install buffer stock? I mean, how lean can you really get?

Rob: Well, I think it really depends on your sourcing model. So, of course we are globally sourced and I'll let Mike talk about that in a little bit. But for our local suppliers it's not uncommon that we will have maybe two days of supply in the building.

Mike Curry: Yes. I would agree with you Rob. Thanks. And some of it is to enable the flexibility that we want within





configuration mix. Some of it is, frankly knowing that merchant very well. I would say for the most part, it's about a day and half-two days depending on the assembly that we are talking about. The supply and demand case and the customer we are trying to support. But there is definitely some variability in what we carry. But for the most part we try to keep it extremely lean.

Joe: When you talk "Globally", it is interesting using Kanban

because everybody thinks of something being shipped very quickly to them. That's tough to imagine in a global matrix, especially when pricing and so many other things are being dictated by things coming over in a container. How does Kanban work globally? Is it just a longer span? A little bit more work in process? Do you just kind of take it just up a notch? How do you do that?

Michael: I can cite two different examples, Joe. One, Rob was talking earlier about we do some re-manufacturing recycle and we do have some assemblies for example, that are built

overseas. There's a business model that suggests that those particular assemblies be re-manufactured based on an expired alternate date. So the signal; the Kanban process for those is OK, as those spent hulks come back that Rob referred to earlier, we yield that assembly. When we get a cart and/or a container load full, that is indeed sent back to the OEM supplier to re-manufacture. That is indeed a signal that's in place with them, with us here.

Another example is an assembly house, an external supplier

locally here but all of the components are indeed sourced from overseas. So that assembly house that is local to us here has got their own signals with the external supplier but the actual Kanban is in place between us and them.





Joe: Do you always think that Kanban a visual signal like a card or a container or is it done electronically? Do you just send them a picture of a container?

Michael: It's primarily a cart on the larger assemblies. And I was referring earlier to the packaging. Obviously, the packaging is coming in...This corrugated packaging that I was referring to is coming in on skids. That's probably more of an electronic signal

that said, "Look, we've consumed the following configurations for the week and here's what we need next."

Rob: Yes. I agree. I'd say most of our Kanban is either a spot on the floor or a height, a tape, a stack, or a cart. The only one, as I was preparing for this session, I was remembering years ago we had an operation in Mitcheldean, England where they made wire harnessing and other components. That was one of the only facilities I saw globally in Xerox that where the card methodology to signal to produce and replenish worked well. There were small parts, small bins, and a small rack. And it worked very well in

that instance. However in the larger parts and the larger lines the cards, when we tried to implement them, I found it really added to an administrative burden that I think was really kind of needless.

What's interesting is you cite electronic. What we're in the process of doing right now is...I'd say by the end of this quarter 100 percent of our plant will be on what we're calling "consumption pull". That's really an electronic Kanban where we've already completed this on a couple of lines and we're doing

our biggest line right now.

Defining the stock points and what is that? No padding, no fluff. What do we really need on a part by part basis? Then setting the replenishment signal in our internal shop for our control system and the human element is completely out of it. Where historically it would be a material dispatcher or an operator who would say:





"Oh, I need some of those, and those." They'd go shopping and they'd scan for the parts they need.

We are truly limiting 100-percent of the human interaction. The human part will only be dated of course if something changes or if there's a defect found. We are going with that electronic Kanban to all of our lines.

Joe: What benefit do you think you'll receive out of that?

Rob: Well, first and foremost it's floor space. At the Webster campus, as we brought more work in and more groups of people in where our manufacturing footprint has been condensed significantly, and so in lines that used to have the benefit of abundance of space that worlds changed significantly. So first is, we are shrinking our lines down, delivering the same output but a significantly reduced footprint. Second, we were pushing the inventory back to the warehouse then ultimately back to the supplier. We create fewer inventories inside of the building.

Third, the less you have to touch a part, the less people you need to touch it. So we're getting efficiencies from the fact, we need less people to do the work.

Michael: Rob, I also think it's a more accurate position of what you truly had in inventory and that signal is representative on the buyers planning page and all the way back to the supplier. It enables a more accurate snap shot of truly where you are in the on hand inventory balances and what you really need.

Joe: I think so because work-in process is always the mystery

for everyone. It's the hardest part to manage, it's the hardest part to account for, it is the hardest part...I mean we could go on and on in the manufacturing part of it and always work-in process is a tough part. As you shrink that I would think it would be you would have to be more efficient and your quality would rise.





Rob: Absolutely, also you start to see elements of waste. We have great employees. So it's not always intuitively obvious that your lines are imbalanced. So, you'll have an operator who is building up sub-assemblies ahead of time. They are working and working and they are building up. That is because they have the materials and the space to do so.

So, when you do install with caps, when you truly in effect look at

your system and try to implement a work control system, which Kanban is only one tool to accomplish that via. But when you really put in a whip cap, it starts to become apparent where the areas of waste and opportunity are in your operation.

Joe: I'm going to ask kind of a silly question, I think. But if you've been doing Kanban for 20 years, what's left to get out of it? I mean, haven't you gotten it right yet?

Rob: It's quality, it’s a continuous journey. Yeah, we've gotten it right. Then we've gotten it better. Then we've gotten it better,

again. Then products change, and we add new products. Then it gives us a whole new way to do it. And then we, for the time to market process, we engage early in the design of the product.

So let's face it. You can't get rid of all waste in a process. It's either cost prohibitive or it's designed in and you have to deal with it. But the next products that come down, you change their sourcing. You change the ways that we test them and build them. That brings about new opportunities.

Michael: Yes, I would agree. We still have a ways to go on the existing product that's in house already Rob is referring to. As you continue to key up the next band of products that are destined for our organization, our factory, you look at those again and think, "Can I do it with the existing model?" Or if the sourcing is slightly different then you have to, perhaps, adjust some of the Kanban assumptions.





Joe: We always talk about pull in lean manufacturing, but is it really being triggered by the customer?

Rob: Not directly, no. I don't remember if it was UPS or FedEx, but if you remember the commercial a few years ago where they do this pan shot some morning and the factory workers aren't there yet and the lines bins are empty. The premise was, "They'll have it stocked in the morning for the parts they need for that

day." It's a great vision but I think global sourcing, particularly for large complex electronic devices, it's really not realistic in today's world. You have to do a hybrid push-pull.

So in a purest sense just in time would be, I get an order. That's my signal to start one and complete one. No orders; everybody sits down. Particularly if you have seasonality for your product or service, it's not possible because you can't afford the staff for your peak demand periods. You have no choice but to staff and design your operation at a lower than your peak and you have to build ahead. So you still have to use your forecasting.

Now it doesn't mean you don't turn a blind eye. For example we look at things like the cue in the prospect list where we're very integrated in the orders cycles globally. We pay attention to where deals are in the sales management process. We tailor the configuration that we have in stock to those processes.

Now clearly we can't do that for all products. The smaller ones, you just need to go on a more historical forecasting and supply-demand rules. But for the very expensive, very large boxes with a longer sales cycle, we absolutely take advantage of

that.

In fact, one of the areas, an example of where we're trying to change and grow, we have a product that's not launched yet. Our goal is absolutely to have some sales skin in the game as to





whether we build it or not. The sales cycles are such that we can build the system inside of it.

We're going to expect our operating companies globally to have commitment that if they want us to build the system, they are selling it. The customer may not have actually fully signed on the line, so we'll need to commit to it. It's going to bring about a whole new level of conversation.

Joe: Is there some other topics that maybe I've left out that maybe we should talk about a little bit? One of them is, I guess, mixed model that I think of right off that I didn't really talk about too much. Can you explain mixed model and what that is?

Michael: Yes. Rob, if you want I'll take a shot at it then you can chime in. Depending on the type of product that we're building for a customer, you can imagine where we're shipping it to may very well have an impact on what goes into the product, right? We know what goes into a product that's for perhaps a product

that's going to be installed in Europe is different than for North America. There's a lot of electronics that are slightly different, different requirements for Rohas versus non-Rohas. Right down to the labeling that the customer may indeed want.

So that precludes that you tend to get into a lot of different configurations for the different customers in geographic locations. So with that, those larger assemblies I was citing earlier that are indeed part of the Kanban process may very well have four, six, eight different configurations. If it's a larger assembly that's got 150 part numbers in it, perhaps 135 of them are all common.

But those other 35 that make it unique require that you indeed may have to have another cart or two in the process. All of our products do indeed carry multiple configurations. And some of those customer requirements are indeed in and around flexibility.





In other words, they'd like it sooner so we tend to either carry unique assemblies on a cart waiting or perhaps carry it at the lower piece part level. Rob, I'll let you build on that if you'd like in terms of configuration mix.

Rob: I'd say the only ability...I think you've painted an adequate picture of the complexity we have to build and deal with and bringing it back to the topic at hand. I think Kanban is an enabler

for that. Because let's say you need to build five vanilla and five chocolate. There's a very expensive board that's different between those two. We will set the Kanban and make sure we've only got five of the boards you need out there, not excess.

Because, let's face it. As much we wish designs were perfect and fail safe there are some scenarios where when you plug the chocolate board into a vanilla it'll work for a while. Then it will prematurely fail or cause other defects that we might not catch.

We don't have a lot of those situations but clearly the more you

control your configuration and the build quality, with the parts on the operators station and take decision making out of the operators hands, it just positively influences on quality.

Joe: In any manufacturing system there is still a time that comes by that you ignore some of these things and you ram something through that you have to deliver; emergencies happens and stuff. Do you ignore Kanban at that time or does Kanban hurt or help you? Or is there a FIFO lane there? How do you handle that; those emergencies?

Mike: It's Mike, I'll take a stab at it. So the Kanban still resides whether it's an emergency order or not. If it's a very unique request we certainly have the ability to work around or perhaps introduce an additional cart, for example. But the Kanban is indeed the core part of the work process and what's on the shop floor. So we do not deviate from the Kanban process itself. We





may introduce another cart for example, into the system or take one out depending on the case. But we do not let the Kanban process go by the way side in cases that are even extreme.

Joe: I think that's a good point. You still follow standard work to be able to produce it.

Michael: Right. It's the way we get work done. It's the way the material gets from the dock to the line. Now of course, if there's one particular part that we are out of and the lines down ...When the Fed Ex truck backs up, we may have that one particular part. We would expedite the line to get the line the pieces they need. But then, that shift will be back to business as usual. If it's a Kessler building or a Kanban-Card or what have you.

Joe: Is there anything you would like to add to this conversation?

Rob: I've said a couple of times, Kanban is a tool in the part of an overall work control system. But you can't start with throwing

a Kanban in. You need to stabilize your production. So if you have a very sporadic and non-standardize build of high rotation workers and maybe you'll build in this quarter and you're not going to build again for a couple of quarters. Kanban, it may be very challenging to implement a Kanban. You have to first look at your process, you have to stabilize it.

You have to reduce your variation in the process cycle time. And of course, you want to pull as much waste as you can out of your process cycle time. Once you've achieved standardization, then Kanban can help bring you to the next level.

That's why this podcast we focus on this one tool which is extremely valuable. But used in the wrong sequence of process improvement, I think you could have some pretty frustrating results and experience a lot of down time.





Michael: Building on that, I think it is perhaps a traditional look at Kanban would suggest "Well OK. It's this little list. I'm going to deal with between me and supplier 'A' 'B' or 'C'." But as the sourcing models do indeed change and become more complex, it might look like you cannot use Kanban. But I think you can indeed continue to use Kanban whether you're supplier is in your back yard or perhaps even hundreds, thousands of miles away. There are Kanban type processes that you can put in place and

that can be productive in a win-win for both your business and your supplier.

Rob: So my advice to someone that really wants to play with this powerful tool is to understand your process. Make sure it's standardized and you've minimized variation. Then set your rules for what your stocking points are how much you can afford to have on your line. What your replenishment signals going to be. Is it going to be electronic-card? Who is going to manage it? Who owns it? Put their name right on it so that it's visible for the public to see.

If it is external where you're dealing with a supplier, engage that supplier. Bring him into your plant, go to their plant. Understand each other’s processes and their constraints and weaknesses. Then the last part is in your culture make sure that you have a velocity for dealing with issues when they come up. Make sure things don't get swept under the carpet. Otherwise, you'll be dealing with issues on every single replenishment, which gets old really quick.





Joseph T. Dager

Lean Six Sigma Black Belt

Ph: 260-438-0411 Fax: 260-818-2022

Email: [email protected]

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What others say: In the past 20 years, Joe and I have collaborated on many difficult issues. Joe's

ability to combine his expertise with "out of the box" thinking is unsurpassed. He has always

delivered quickly, cost effectively and with ingenuity. A brilliant mind that is always a pleasure to work with." James R.

Joe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive company providing direction in areas such as Lean Marketing, Product Marketing, Product

Launches and Re-Launches. As a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Business901 provides and implements marketing, project and performance

planning methodologies in small businesses. The simplicity of a single flexible model will create clarity for your staff and as a result better

execution. My goal is to allow you spend your time on the need versus the plan.

An example of how we may work: Business901 could start with a consulting style utilizing an individual from your organization or a virtual

assistance that is well versed in our principles. We have capabilities to plug virtually any marketing function into your process immediately. As

proficiencies develop, Business901 moves into a coach’s role supporting the process as needed. The goal of implementing a system is that the processes

will become a habit and not an event.

Business901 Podcast Opportunity Expert Status

mailto:[email protected]

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Overview of Kanban at Xerox

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