KANBAN SIMULATION MODEL FOR PRODUCTION PROCESS OPTIMIZATION

A long time has passed since the KANBAN system has been established as an efficient method for coping with the excessive inventory. Still, the possibilities for its improvement through its integration with other different approaches should be investigated further. The basic research challenge of this paper is to present benefits of KANBAN implementation supported with Discrete Event Simulation (DES). In that direction, at the beginning, the basics of KANBAN system are presented with emphasis on the information and material flow, together with a methodology for implementation of KANBAN system. Certain analysis on combining the simulation with this methodology is presented. The paper is concluded with a practical example which shows that through understanding the philosophy of the implementation methodology of KANBAN system and the simulation methodology, a simulation model can be created which can serve as a basis for a variety of experiments that can be conducted within a short period of time, resulting with production process optimization.