Lean Production Simplified, 3rd Edition

Just-in-Time Production ◾ 101

The Store

In Figure5.2 we placed our finished parts in a “store” or supermarket. This

is where our customers come to “buy” parts.

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A store is a controlled inven-

tory of parts that is used to schedule an upstream process through some

kind of kanban. As we show, one of our kanban rules is that no defective

item shall be sent to a customer (whether internal or external). This is the

same as a store owner’s pledge not to sell a defective product to his or her

customers.

Our ideal condition is not to have a store and to practice one-piece pro-

duction. But this isn’t always possible for the following reasons:

◾ Cycle time mismatches: Some processes (e.g., stamping) operate at very

fast cycle times and need to chan