Kanban Tool
In my last article I described Kanban and why it is critical for manufacturing departments in small and medium manufacturing.
The Kanban tool is a Power App or other application on the shop floor with just 2 (or 3 if you need it) data entry fields.
The example screen is so simple, people are almost confused by it. I mocked it up below.
The elements of the KanBan Tool are as follows:
- Item No.
- Quantity
- [Optional] Scrap Quantity
- There is an OK button and a Cancel button.
You can either have a login (to know who scanned) or just leave it running all the time.
NOTE: This approach can use a BC Device License to allow posting by many operators as you will have a custom page for reporting and posting and the Device License can be used for reporting production information (one of the 5 use cases that are allowed).
When the employee uses the tool, they scan or enter the Item No. and Quantity from the Kanban card. This is how many “good” items they produce. If you want to capture scrap, it would be additional quantities for purposes of capturing the consumption.
When they click the OK button the following should happen.
- An assembly or production order should be created (your choice as a business) for Item No. for the Quantity selected. (Note: Assembly won’t handle the scrap)
- For an assembly, post it immediately. All done.
- For a production order
- Automatically consume (as if you have backflushing on) adding the right amount for the Scrap Quantity.
- Automatically report the Output Journal for each operation for Work Center/Machine Center costing (as if you have backflushing on) for the Quantity + Scrap Quantity.
- Output from the last operation just the Quantity to create inventory.
- Post all
- Finish the Production Order (Note: See the Kanban Natively for a lower code version without scrap).
One problem with this approach might be that if the consumption runs into a negative quantity it will stall, so you may want to discuss with your partner “queueing” these Kanban entries in a Journal and posting it after some supervisor reviews it.
Kanban “Natively”
To natively achieve something similar with no programming at all.
- Create an Assembly BOM for your Item No. with Items and Resources
- Create an Assembly order for Item No. and Quantity and post it every time you do a Kanban.
OR
- Create a BOM for your Kanban Item with all components set to Backflush
- Create a Routing for your Kanban item with all operations set to Backflush
- Create a Production Order for the Item No. with the Quantity (no scrap though)
- Finish the production order.
This will automatically report the Output at each operation through the backflushing on the routings, and will automatically consume all the materials and output the finished good in the quantity equal to the production order quantity.
This approach can only be done by someone with a FULL user license and must be a NAMED user. The user also needs the ability to create a Production Order - so generally it would not be a shop floor employee at a "kiosk" doing this.
Conclusion
LEAN manufacturing and the standard techniques used to implement it have been in conflict for a long time. I recently did a study and can confidently say most “mid-tier”
ERP for a small manufacturing company do not have the eKanban features that you would find in top-tier systems such as SAP Hana.
The huge advantage of Business Central is the relatively easy access to Power Apps and AL programming language to build an eKanban capability into BC.
This "poor mans" eKanban is generally going to be good enough for most small companies. For the "Native" approach you would