A hybrid push/pull design of kanban systems during production ramp-up phase

This paper investigates a hybrid push/pull design of kanban systems that better fulfils the requirements posed by uncertain environments during production ramp‐up phase. Rapid surges in customer demand after start‐of‐production of new products impact the operations performance of material flows and stock levels. We address this issue and demonstrate that an incremental planning model, allowing fluctuations in the number of kanbans, provides viable planning results. In addition, we select possible kanban system environments by using Monte Carlo simulation. This approach proactively allows the operations manager to cope better with processing times and demand variations. In addition, it may reveal potential weakness in standard approaches for kanban system planning. Our research is based on a real case study data of the German auto industry.