DrK System

Automated Kanban Inventory System

The Kanban System is an integral part of implementing the Just in Time (JIT) manufacturing philosophy which was designed to control inventory and reduce waste. The history of the Kanban system can be traced back to the late 1940s when Toyota made a cultural commitment to continuous improvement to drive its manufacturing processes to peak performance.

The main advantage of the Kanban system lies in its innate ability to drive down costs and waste by improving the flow of production. Many of the scheduling advantages of the Kanban system spring from naturally from the core elements of lean and just in time manufacturing strategies.

The evolution of Kanban and warehouse management systems has opened the door for Electronic Kanban to replace the original paper cards. Now, instead of using Kanban cards and passing them upstream for replenishment, we let computers and software track inventory levels for every physical storage location.

This boasts several major advantages over the original Kanban card method.

• Inventory traceability throughout a facility
• Faster replenishment rates
• Less inventory at workstations
• Increased accuracy
• Can set a replenishment hierarchy

Service Features and Benefits

DrK System works very well with an ERP system that has been enabled with the correct features. People find that updating the Kanban usage is much easier with automating the stock inventory or scanning of container barcodes rather than the passing of physical cards. Cards that would have been manually recorded to the financial and other business systems can now be done automatically. This electronic method also allows instant adjustability of Kanban quantities when customer demands change (rather than reissuing manual cards).