TOCICO

In many supply chains customers and their suppliers unnecessarily suffer shortages, late delivery and excess inventory that seriously threaten profits. This session enables you to understand how pull systems, encompassing fast response, can be developed in complex MTO and MTS supply chain environments together with deep insights into the underlying logic. The drum-buffer-rope (DBR) application of theory of constraints (TOC) was originally concerned with the MTO environment where the cost world thinking manifests itself in local optimization, intermediate due dates and views any excess capacity as waste. DBR directly challenges this thinking by acknowledging the critical role of capacity buffering, the characteristic behavior of the flow paths (VAIT), the merits of aggregating buffers and the central role of what is now referred to as buffer management (BM). BM is a management signaling system based on four functions (prioritize, expedite, escalate and target improvements) that is key to this and all other TOC applications. Simplified DBR (SDBR) is a development that avoids the complexities of the close scheduling of even one resource by managing the aggregated planned load on the most heavily loaded resources and delegating the detailed scheduling to the shop floor. This application is now widely used as it provides the benefits in most environments without having to address the complexities of scheduling algorithms. Make to availability (MTA) and replenishment are TOC applications that are concerned with MTS environments and therefore stock as opposed to time is used in the management of flow in the wider distribution network. The concept of aggregation is again evident in ensuring stock in the supply network is kept at the lowest level until pulled through the network. The associated stock buffer management system responds dynamically to stock availability in the short term and stock targets in the longer term. The consistency in the DBR and MTA buffer management systems means that MTO and MTS products can be managed through one BM system. Therefore DBR, SDBR, MTA and replenishment offer a coherent theoretical development that is consistent with Toyota Production System (TPS) and lean supply but applicable in more complex environments.