Lean tool - Kanban

Kanbans are systems to limit the Work-In-Process in the plant.

With a kanban, units are only allowed to move to the next production step when they receive a signal, which can be digital or physical such as a card.

In the game, adding a kanban will impose a maximum stock before and after stations (wip-in/wip-out). As soon as enough space is available downstream, the units will advance automatically.

This creates what is called a "pull process", because once all the kanban spaces in the workshop are taken, new products can only be started for production when products are delivered to the customers at the end of the process.

With the Kanban improvement, you can choose how many Kanban spaces to setup before/after each station (see picture below). Note that you need to setup at least the quantity of the batch size (otherwise units will not be able to move).