Our friend, colleague and mentor, Josette Russell (Principal at Dynamic Lean), pointed out to us an interesting statistic mentioned in a recent post from Industry Week’s Continuous Improvement Newsletter. Apparently, approximately 30% of the IW Best Plants winners and finalists since 2006 have implemented “widespread” Kanban/JIT inventory management programs with their suppliers. Seeing the numbers, and being the data junkies we are, we decided to plot the yearly numbers and see if there is a trend. (Click on the image for a larger view)
Questions of statistical significance aside, it appears that there is, indeed, a growing percentage of the Best Plant winners and finalists who take an “all-in” view of this transformative methodology.
With our breakthrough approach to Dynamic Resizing, we are seeing many of our plants take this same “all-in” approach, moving parts in and out of specific replenishment methodologies as demand and supplier requirements change. The key is to be able to identify which parts should be on Kanban and which should be on, say, ROP.
How about you? Has your plant jumped into the deep end of the JIT pool? Are you still driven primarily by MRP strategies?
