Pull vs Push: a Discussion of Lean, JIT, Flow, and Traditional MRP

The lean manufacturing support philosophy has recently received increased interest, potentially allowing it to break like a huge wave across industry. The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems of the 1990s have been burdened with the liability of carrying on some well-publicized Material Requirements Planning (MRP) problems like complex bills of material (BOMs), inefficient workflows and unnecessary transactions, activities, and data collections.

Companies such as John Costanza Institute of Technology (JCIT) have been the pioneering source of the philosophies and techniques behind flow manufacturing, which replaces shop-floor silos, such as machines grouped by their function, and traditional scheduling and forecasting with process or product family-based production lines (often referred to as cells) designed to fill orders based on actual daily demand.

The term flow manufacturing is closely related to and thus often confused with other demand-driven manufacturing strategies, such as agile, just in time (JIT), and lean manufacturing. They also streamline processes, eliminate waste, use kanban signals to replenish supplies and are subject to continuous improvement.

However, flow manufacturing leverages some additional techniques helping manufacturers create any product on any given day and quantity, including the “quantity of one” (i.e., through the so-called mixed-model production), while keeping inventories to a minimum and shortening cycle times to fill customer orders quickly.

Like this content? Why not share it?