A pull management model for a production cell under variable demand conditions

The objective of this work is to contribute to the understanding of the dynamics enacted by the demand variability and influencing decision-makers with their manufacturing strategies. In particular, we consider a single kanban cell, in which the main actors are typically a production department that acts as a supplier and an assembly department which acts as a customer. This cell is subjected to a variable demand modeled as a random variable with a known statistical distribution. This variability complicates the cell operation. In order to maintain the system productivity and to limit the queues in the system, a management model for cell operation, called ”virtual kanban strategy", has been proposed. In this work the authors have utilized an approach based on the system dynamics simulation model.