Sustainability of resources
With the high demand on global sustainability of natural resources, we see increased benefits in holistic system thinking used in supply chain management. The pressure on environmental awareness and eliminating of wastage in every detail of our activity. In todays world we take overproduction as standard and throwing away food is very common routine. European retailers are reporting up to 1.5% of sales revenue as spoiled food. When we talk about pharmaceuticals we reach up to 4% of expired drugs. Let’s take a minute and think about all the wasted resources consumed to build and deliver these products that we do not need or no longer want …
A wholistic supply chain management helps to maximally satisfy external and internal customers, not just maximizing own profits.
The most successful companies in their industries, such as Toyota, Apple, Zara, achieve a multiple higher net profit than their competitors,
by their innovative products delivered by fast and flexible supply chains.
Your LEAN manufacturing and delivery processes will reduce high total cost instead of just small partial savings generated by individual department.
The rule here is to build higher value for the customer, this will turn in the higher net profit. But it doesn’t work the other way around.
IKS ekanban smoothing supply chain according to real customer’s needs, without overproduction and unnecessary waste of resources.
Don’t you believe? Just test IKS ekanban, all your overproduction and waste will be eliminated!
Industry 4.0
Subject of “Industry 4.0” is for someone too scary, but for another one a great challenge. There are always two sides of the coin, but there is also a golden middle way.
Even excellent technology and great people can’t succeed, if they are driven by a malfunctioning process.
A truly unique example is the production of Tesla, which has set everything up for the innovative usage of robotization and digitization in the car production. Unfortunately, they were not able to satisfy own customers even two years after booking orders and placing a deposit for the Tesla Model 3. There are many reasons, from imperfect processes and production flows, to the missing robot serviceman.
Another result of Industry 4.0 is the collection and storing of huge amounts of data from manufacturing processes. The future analysis of many tiny details, we lose the overview of the complete process and to sort out the key from non-valuable is also difficult.
We should never lose the core reason why our company exists, who is our customer and is willing to pay for our products and services. It is always our customer, who should be our engine for innovation and all our resources should be used to to satisfy him.
The complete logic of IKS ekanban is fully focused on customer needs and elimination of all waste in work planning and information transfers. With our shared on-line visualization, you will manage processes, technology, and people with maximal benefit for customer and gross profit in your operations. You will gain a holistic overview of all the processes that can be continuously improved.
With IKS, your technology will get excellent process of Industry 4.0!
Healthcare
The usage of PULL principle in healthcare is a major trend in the United States and Western Europe.
Healthcare is a very expensive, it is using hi-tech technology, skilled personnel and shortly expiring material. Population in European countries is getting aged and the sustainability of healthcare become very important.
Here are two main examples of Kanban used in healthcare.
The first is maintaining a stable supply of medical material and drugs (it can be also service as laundry and food preparation). The target isn’t reduction of accessibility, but to visualise the availability and aging across all departments after internal distribution. At a glance, you’ll see all the material supposed to expire and will be able to redirect it to department with higher-consumption turn.
When optimizing this pull principle, the value of finances locked medical material can be reduced by 60%.
The second example is the sterilization and preparation of surgery operating tools, which can be prepared in standardized sets for immediate use. As of now, it wouldn’t happen that the very expensive surgeons are wasting their time by waiting for a nurse to prepare all the tools. Nobody will be surprised by unexpected incident, requiring immediate intervention or eventually adding the necessary operating tools.
IKS can make LEAN transformation easier and medical facility will achieve higher efficiency than is usual for automotive industry!