Comparison among three pull control policies: Kanban, base stock, and generalized kanban

This paper is concerned with make-to-stock pull control policies. A classical policy is the kanban policy. Another policy, very easy to implement, is the base stock policy. These two policies contain one design parameter per stage. A general control policy, known as the generalized kanban policy, can also be used to implement the pull mechanism. The generalized kanban policy includes, as special cases, the kanban and the base stock policies. This policy uses two parameters for each stage of the production system. The aim of this paper is to provide qualitative and quantitative comparisons of these three policies. The results of our study will help to choose the policy to implement in order to control a production system. We give practical rules. We also show that if there is no delay in filling orders, all three policies have similar costs. However, for the systems studied, we show that, if there is a delay in filling orders, generalized kanban systems and base stock systems yield close to optimal costs, which are lower than costs of kanban systems for the same service quality.