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Large production batches negatively affect availability and freshness.
Many production managers prefer large production runs to improve their local measure of plant productivity. However, such large runs delay the production of other items which may be experiencing threat of future stockouts. Large runs taken infrequently also result in higher inventory and loss of freshness.
This mindset is further accentuated by textbooks focusing on Economic Batch Quantity (EBQ), which optimizes setup cost and inventory carrying cost. Like all optimisations, it is actually a compromise, with the inherent assumption that setup times are fixed.
Dr. Shigeo Shingo’s SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Dies) technique shatters this compromise by drastically reducing the setup time, bringing down EBQ and improving flow. As a result, both availability and freshness improve significantly.
Have you implemented SMED on your production lines to improve scheduling flexibility?