A manager wants to determine the number of containers to use for incoming parts for a kanban system to be installed next month. The process will have a usage rate of 80 pieces per hour. Because the process is new, the manager has assigned an inefficiency factor of .35. Each container holds 45 pieces, and it takes an average of 75 minutes to complete a cycle. How many containers should be used? As the system improves, will more or fewer containers be required?

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Hartley Electronics, Inc., in Nashville, produces short runs of custom airwave scanners for the defense industry. You have been asked by the owner, Janet Hartley, to reduce inventory by introducing a kanban system. After several hours of analysis, you develop the following data for s connectors used in one work cell. How many kanbans do you need for this connector? Number of kanbans = kanbans (round your response to the nearest whole number). Daily demand Lead time Safety stock Kanban size 1,000 connectors 2 days 0.50 day 500 connectors

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Why is Kanban not needed in a perfectly running Just-in-Time system?

You are asked to analyze the kanban system of LeWin, a French manufacturer of gaming devices. One of the workstations feeding the assembly line produces part M670N. The daily demand for M670N is 1,750 units. The average processing time per unit is 0.004 day. LeWin's records show that the average container spends 1.050 days waiting at the feeder workstation. The container for M670N can hold 375 units. 16 containers are authorized for the part. Recall that p is the average processing time per container, not per individual part. a. The value of the policy variable, a, that expresses the amount of implied safety stock in this system is (Enter your response rounded to three decimal places.)

Is it feasible that lean management ignores some of the factors that contribute to the success of an organization? In the event that this is the case, what are the unintended consequences of these behaviors, which may have the impact of diminishing rather than enhancing the efficiency of the organization?