Synthesis of Kanban control policies for multi-stage just-in-time assembly systems

This paper studies the problem of determining the number of Kanbans that should be assigned to each production stage of a multi-stage assembly system in a just-in-time production environment. The objective is to minimize the inventory cost of the system. A new algorithm is developed as a means of solving such a problem. The approach is described in some detail and the theoretical results obtained are illustrated by using a numerical example. A set of randomly generated test problems are also included to illustrate the performance of the algorithm. The results show that the algorithm proposed in this paper is indeed superior both in terms of minimizing the required amount of computational effort and improving accuracy.