Toyota is one of very large company in automobile. In their production, Toyota Company has applied JIT (Just in Time) approach in their manufacturing. The advantages of using JIT approach is to reduce or minimize the waste of production, reduce hands-off, reduce re-work and any other delays on manufacturing process.
One of characteristic in JIT approach is the flow of work. Parts or component of material will flow from one work center to many others with intermediate storage, and flow into work centers will also come from many work centers with intermediate storage. In the large company like Toyota, this approach is the most suitable to be applied.
The derivative applications of JIT approach is karban system. Karban means “card” or “visible record” and refers to cards used to control the flow of production through a factory. Karban is useful system for company like Toyota that has many work centers. For example there are two work centers with difference function, work center 1 is to producing component parts and work center 2 is to making assemblies. And there is an intermediate storage area for component parts. Let say Work Center 1 is producing component 101 and 102. After do production, that components will move to intermediate storage part and each component is labeled with kanban card 101 and 102 that contain component’s information. If Work Center 2 is need part 101 in assembly, the box 101 (labeled card 101) will moved to Work Center 2 and so on for box 102.
Toyota uses a “two-card” kanban system. The first is transport or conveyance, card, which moves container of parts from one stock location to another. The second is a production card, which authorizes