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Alpharma Barnstaple Visit - Simultaneous Planning by MRP and Electronic Kanban - Kanban Article
The article entitled: "Alpharma Barnstaple Visit - Simultaneous Planning by MRP and Electronic Kanban" is in the Kanban Articles section of Operations Management Papers area...
ARTICLE DESCRIPTION: The long trip through the beautiful Devonshire countryside on the 25th April proved both interesting and thought provoking for all who attended.
MORE INFO: Alpharma Barnstaple Visit - Simultaneous Planning by MRP and Electronic Kanban The long trip through the beautiful Devonshire countryside on the 25th April proved both interesting and thought provoking for all who attended. Mark Ingram-Smith (Planning Manager) and Stephen Woodward (Planner Manufacturing) of Alpharma Barnstaple provided an interesting and honest presentation followed by a factory tour. The presentation gave a good overview of Alpharma, the Pharmaceutical company who produces over 5 billion generic tablets (Aspirin, Paracetamol, Contraception and other high volume products) on this site per year.The manufacturing process includes dispensing of raw materials (3 cubicles) , granulation (7 areas) , compression (28 machines) , film/coating (6 machines) , printing (2 machines) and packing (19 lines) in either blister packs or containers.There are currently 235-bulk stock keeping units (13 Kanban managed) and 352-finished product stock keeping units (24 Kanban managed) .Of the 60-80 bulk work orders per week Kanban manages 40% of the volume. Alpharma Barnstaple undertook a Lean project, which identified that a manual Kanban coupled with quick change over reduction programme would produce quick wins.In fact they believe it saved them the investment in a £2 million new warehouse, which was avoided through the reduction in inventory. The company give priority to Kanban products over MRP generated works orders for both raw material and machine allocation and have now developed and written an electronic replacement (in house) for the manual Kanban cards which allows far greater visibility for all involved, including the planners and shop operators. Whilst it has been recognised that the new process is not perfect, it has clearly moved planning at Alpharma Barnstaple a considerable way forward.They have seen improvements in customer service, reductions in inventory, reduced change over times, more ownership for results by the shop floor and a smoother production plan.However forecast accuracy, component/raw material quality and the management of MRP still give the planners plenty to do. My abiding memory of the factory tour were the machines that compresses 300,000 tablets per hour, and the blister-packing machine which is a piece of engineering beauty. Our thanks to Mark and his colleagues at Alpharma for organising such an excellent and interesting event and tour. Nick Wright, MIOM
PUBLISHER: Institute of Operations Management
Page number: 9 Word count: 1000
Vol 28 - No 06 - July/August 2002
The article can be downloaded in full from the publisher's site i.e. the Institute of Operations Management.
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