Kanban is a production control logic (PCL) that restricts when operations are allowed to process products according to a pull mechanism, instead of the usual push mechanism when operations are allowed to process products as soon as products are available and the operation is operational. The Kanban objects represents an information link from a Buffer (Kanban Buffer) to its preceeding Operation (Kanban Operation). Via this link information about the inventory level of the Kanban Buffer is passed on to the Kanban Operation. The Kanban Operation is allowed to process a variant as soon as the inventory level for that variant is below its maximum level (variant capacity). The variant capacities of the Kanban Buffer is calculated with information from the setting Limit table.

The Kanban object is used by simply connecting it with flow objects in the model. A connection from the Kanban object to an Operation marks the kanban operation and a connection from a Buffer to a Kanban object marks the kanban buffer of the Kanban. There can be only one kanban operation and one kanban buffer per Kanban object.

Note: The kanban operation and kanban buffer as well as the Kanban object itself must be on the same level in the model, e.g. connections can't be made into a Component.

Settings

The settings of the Kanban are listed below along with a short description and possibly a link to a more detailed description about the setting.

Setting

Description

Name	Sets the name of the object.
Location	Displays the location of the object.
Limit table	Used to determine at what inventory levels (per variant) of the kanban buffer that variants should be allowed to enter the kanban operation. The variant capacities are calculated by dividing the capacity of the kanban buffer among the different variants using a proportion figure, see image to the right. Given a kanban buffer capacity of 100 and the proportions in the example to the right the variant capacities would be: Black: 100 * 3 / (3 + 3 + 2 + 2) = 30 Gray: 100 * 3 / (3 + 3 + 2 + 2) = 30 Red: 100 * 2 / (3 + 3 + 2 + 2) = 20 Blue: 100 * 2 / (3 + 3 + 2 + 2) = 20 Note: Limits for assembled parts should be specified using the assembly identity of the assembled parts, see assembly identity for more details.
User attributes	Lists all attributes that the user has added to the object. See User attributes for more details.