Machine-heavy operations and job shops are often difficult to control. Customer requirements shift, capacity is limited, technical constraints are real, and scheduling becomes a constant balancing act. In practice, flow is often elusive, and there always seems to be something that has to give. A customer urgently needs product, but the machine is tied up
Assembly lines are expected to absorb demand changes smoothly. They rarely do. When demand increases, operators feel it first. They struggle to finish before the takt pulse, idling the next station, or they move with the unit to catch up. Overtime is used to recover arrears, or extra people are added after the fact, not
If you manage a mixed‑model assembly line, you’ve likely asked the questions that surface when the line stutters, when takt compliance falters, and when the neat precision of the balance chart feels worlds away from the reality on the floor. The instinct is to look harder at the balance chart: to re‑do task assignments and
In my earlier article on constraint‑aware line balancing, I explored how real‑world assembly lines rarely behave like the tidy line balance charts and yamazumi’s we sketch during design. Task dependencies, operator interference, spatial constraints — they all complicate the balancing process. Yet even when the balance looks right, another layer of complexity emerges: ensuring operators
Line balancing is often described as the theory and relatively simple act of more or less evenly loading operators and stations with work. This Lean principle creates flow, limits overproduction, reduces work-in-process, and creates a balanced workload across all operators – without exceeding takt time. Most introductions to line balancing, therefore, start with the same
When working in machine shops, I’m always surprised to hardly see any flow-related indicators. You’ll typically see data on OEE-related indicators like reject rates, uptime, performance (mostly under the heading of efficiency), and maybe something on actual versus planned volume or schedule adherence. But flow? Yes, in a few cases, teams can show me the
Value stream mapping, or VSM, is a widely spread analytical technique to chart the material flow and the way it is managed, including some key data about the process. In an interesting blog post by Michel Baudin from 2013 (“Where do Value Stream Maps come from?”) he researches the question of where these maps originate
Takt time. A simple search will give you countless definitions. But besides the ones that mix up takt time with cycle time, and the ones that speak of takt time as a rate, most of them will give you something along the lines of the time interval at which production needs to complete products in
I often hear or am part of discussions on JIT or Just-in-Time. What I then often witness is a Babel-like confusion on what JIT entails, and what it doesn’t. Often, companies conclude they’re already “doing JIT” but when reviewing their approach are absolutely not doing anything JIT-related. During COVID 19, JIT was typically seen as
Meanwhile, we have all been bombarded with posts and articles that are quick to expose the Just-in-Time and Lean approach to management as one of the major causes of the lack of medical supplies, so much needed in the battle against COVID-19. Well-respected journals and university professors alike have ignorantly equated Just-in-Time and Lean with
