Tag: Flow - Demand Driven Technologies

Does Pull Manufacturing Still Work?

November 9, 2021 by Bernard Milian

Most companies are experiencing difficult times on the supply side. Containers are piling up on one side of the globe and are sorely lacking on the other. Delays are piling up, and variability is clearly at a maximum on the supply side. Can our supply chains really be demand driven in this context? Does pull … Read more

Demand Driven Manufacturing

October 13, 2021October 12, 2021 by Bernard Milian

You have probably already seen this diagram, which summarizes different manufacturing typologies, in one form or another: Is the Demand Driven model a good fit for these typologies? How would your demand driven manufacturing implementation change to support each environment? In each of these flow typologies, with the exception of Engineering-to-Order (ETO), customer demand moves … Read more

End-to-End Supply Chain Planning in an Upstream/Downstream Organization

August 31, 2021August 31, 2021 by Bernard Milian

For small and medium enterprises, the question of upstream supply chain vs. downstream supply chain management does not arise. The factory is in direct contact with the company’s customers, and the supply chain team handles the end-to-end planning process: sales forecasts, order taking, production planning, procurement, inventory management and distribution. In large, multi-site groups, things … Read more

The Perfect Production Schedule Doesn’t Exist

July 8, 2024April 27, 2021 by Bernard Milian

Industry 4.0 and digitalization are on the rise. Technology is moving into our shop floors. LCD touch screens are gradually replacing physical boards and post-its. However, we must recognize that the vast majority of our workshops, however complex, are planned or scheduled in Excel, right? The promise of scheduling algorithms Scheduling solutions have existed for … Read more

DDOM: How to Identify Flow Profiles

April 22, 2021March 23, 2021 by Bernard Milian

Flow Profiles vs Inventory Buffer Profiles For DDMRP inventory management, buffer profiles are defined. A buffer profile groups together articles with similar characteristics – replenishment times, demand variability, supply variability. This will allow to assign identical buffer sizing rules to all these articles (red, yellow, green zones, detection of demand spikes, etc.). When it comes to building a … Read more

Your Material Flow Needs Rhythm. Here’s Why.

June 23, 2021March 16, 2021 by Bernard Milian

Music, Rhythm, and Material Flow If you are a musician, or just a music lover, you probably have the rhythm in your skin! From classical to pop, rock, electro, or the “flow” of a rapper, music is a flow, isn’t it? The common point in most of these forms of music – at least Western … Read more

Heijunka and Demand Driven Supply Chains

October 21, 2022January 5, 2021 by Bernard Milian

Let’s be zen in the VUCA world. What is Heijunka? In the implementation of a Lean pull flow derived from the Toyota production system, the Heijunka is an essential mechanism whose key role is to level load the flow. Typically, a Heijunka controls the pace and sequence of production on a given flow. As paradoxical … Read more

Group Planning: A Productive and Agile Supply Chain

June 29, 2021November 24, 2020 by Bernard Milian

Developing an agile supply chain means reducing lot sizes, reducing lead times, and increasing replenishment frequencies. All this is virtuous to speed up flows, but can conflict with real and legitimate production or transport constraints. If you’ve been involved in Lean initiatives, you’ve probably faced these trade-offs. Reducing batch sizes increases the number of changeovers, … Read more

Batching for DDMRP Flow: What is the Equation?

June 29, 2021November 17, 2020 by Bernard Milian

Four years ago I was invited to introduce DDMRP to a team from a medical device company, a subsidiary of a German group. Supply chain, purchasing, production, quality were in the room. They wanted to know more because they were suffering from long lead times, too much stock, unsatisfactory service levels, and faced many emergencies. The company had … Read more

Pull Flow Systems for All

June 29, 2021October 26, 2020 by Bernard Milian

Pull Flow, an Old Story…

In 1987, as a young engineer at Philips, I had the chance to take part in a study trip to Japan and visit about ten companies there. In most of them you could see in each workshop card boards. In one of the factories I asked our guide what it was. He was astonished that I asked the question – it was so obvious: it is a Kanban board, to replenish supplies. That is normal. It was a non-event, a practice that was not questioned, had been in place for decades… but almost absent at the time from our western factories. Kanban dates to the ’50s. Drum-buffer-rope dates back to the ’80s. These are old concepts. Are they adapted to our modern, technological age?

Developing Supply Chain Agility

June 29, 2021October 13, 2020 by Bernard Milian

When I was a kid I learned to play ping-pong on a homemade table. The boards were not made from one piece, but were made from planks that had been assembled. With time and playing in the garden, the wood had worked, the boards had spread, bent, deformed – it never stopped us from playing hard games, but the bounces were quite unpredictable!

Supply Chain Planning is Like a Relay Race

June 29, 2021October 6, 2020 by Bernard Milian

Have you ever watched a relay race? Each runner gives the best of his performance for his portion of the race, and passes the baton to the next runner in a predefined area. In a 4x100m relay, to pass the baton there is a 20m transmission zone: 10m before the 100m, and 10m after. This … Read more

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