Heijunka

Volatility in market demand leads to temporary over- and under utilization of productive assets. Heijunka aims at de-coupling the production system from market volatility. The production program is spread as even as possible over time. This achieves high asset utilization, short lead times, and low inventories. There are validated Heijunka methods for the manufacturing industry, but for the process industry this remains a research gap. This article describes the development of a Heijunka model for the process industry in order to close that gap.

Regarding the optimisation of capacity utilisation the increasing product diversity has been an unsolved problem in job lot production for a long time. State of the art for solving such problems is the concept Heijunka, which means “levelled production”. The application of group technology offers the possibility to utilise this concept with regard to a low volume and high mixed production. In this context the characteristics of job lot production are investigated. Referring to these characteristics the concept Heijunka used in mass and serial production is adapted. The approach was applied in collaboration with Robert Bosch GmbH.