Push-Kanban – a kanban-based production control concept for job shops

Job-shop production in an individual and small-batch manufacturing environment demands producing simultaneously different products in many customised versions and in small numbers. The associated variability of the time-phased work content leads to a high degree of complexity and turbulence in the manufacturing process of such a production type. Therefore, production control becomes significantly more complicated, and many theories on how to cope fail in the real world. Despite the many technological and conceptual advances in the field of job-shop control over the past few decades, there is still a remarkable lack of practical control approaches for job-shop production. For this reason the Push-Kanban production control concept will be introduced in this article. It combines robust push scheduling along with a kanban-driven, decentralised inventory control mechanism to create a holistic control approach, integrating all production control tasks. Thus, it offers a feasible option for controlling job-shop production in industrial practice. This article examines the effectiveness of the concept by means of a simulation study based on real data.