E-Kanban Data Analytics To Optimize Your Supply Chain
By Francesco Dall'Oca
Unlock The Power Of Data To Optimize Your Supply Chain Processes
The topic “e-kanban data analytics” is very important for the well-being of every manufacturing company: everyday they order, produce, and sell tons of materials, as well as move them through a vast logistic network. These actions hide tons of data, you can collect, read, and measure. For instance, you can know your actual consumption pace or your supplier’s true lead time.
Why should a manufacturing company collect and use this kind of data? Because data bring actionable insights, leading to better planning, optimization, and ultimately, improved business performance.
However, IBM estimates that 90% of generated data is never analyzed or acted upon.
The good news is that your company already generates the necessary data through its normal business operations. You have just to unearth them and let them speak to you. If this concept seems too philosophical, let’s go concrete.
In this article, we’ll guide you to discover how simple is harnessing the power of data thanks to the electronic Kanban software. E-Kanban is not only an essential tool when you are digitalizing your supply chain operations during your lean transformation journey, as it automates many manual works. It can also give you a lot of elaborate data.
The Kanban System
Before dealing with the e-Kanban world, let’s take a step back and describe the Kanban methodology.
Let’s consider the basic action any manufacturing company does every day: the replenishment process, internally between storages and production lines, or externally, with the suppliers.
By applying the Kanban methodology to the replenishment process you gain various benefits:
- Avoiding overproduction.
- Increasing materials’ availability.
- Streamlining the replenishment process activities.
- Flexibility in dealing with customers’ demands.
- Visibility and transparency in the supply chain.
This methodology was born in Toyota more than 60 years ago, yet it is still very useful and widespread. In recent years, companies started moving to electronic Kanban, such as KanbanBOX, which allows them to scale the Kanban method. With e-Kanban software, they can extend the Kanban to many more components and even use it with external suppliers.
When it comes to data analysis, getting data from your operations, your production, and your supply chain is way more difficult if you have a manual Kanban. Nothing is automatically recorded.
On the other hand, if your manual Kanban comes together with some other digital systems (for example an MRP or a WMS) you’ll have data fragmented in different software.
E-Kanban Data Analytics: Unearths Precious Info
Digitalizing the supply chain with an electronic Kanban provides the company with many improvements. For example, it prevents Kanban cards from being lost, you have everything under control, and won’t miss deadlines! It also allows you to exchange real-time information with the whole supply chain (customers and suppliers) without having to phone or email. Software will do everything for you.
Given those benefits for granted, we now want to go deeper into another important feature of e-Kanban software. Data analytics.
E-Kanban software, such as KanbanBOX, does continuous and real-time data analysis.
The good part is that you don’t have to implement anything. Indeed, you feed the e-Kanban with the data you input at the very beginning. For example, the first action you need to perform when you implement e-Kanban software is to enter the following:
- Suppliers / Customers you work with
- Bins quantity
- Replenishment Lead Time
Easy, right?
All the information an e-Kanban needs is already in your hands and by analyzing them, the software provides improvement suggestions.
How to Leverage E-Kanban Data Analytics
KanbanBOX data analytics help you find the patterns and the exceptions to redefine your supply chain strategy. Your operations manager won’t be busy planning (and re-planning!) the machines’ allocations; your materials planner won’t struggle anymore due to changes in suppliers’ priorities. They can finally focus on strategic matters.
KanbanBOX statistics, for example, enable you to:
Cut the storage occupancy. Statistics suggest what to cut so that you can immediately decrease the cost of your stocks. This is a double advantage. On the one hand, you’ll have less working capital, on the other fewer stocks means freeing up space for other purposes.
Be ready for the future. By analyzing historical data, you can prevent stock out and delays. Avoiding the day-to-day planning, you’ll have more time to focus on seasonal or emergency production peaks, which deserve your focus.
Optimize your supply chain. Going further, you can read the data to get inspiration for future optimizations in your processes. For instance, you can change the Lead Time or the part numbers in a Kanban to be sure you always have the right stocks. Again, you can negotiate with your suppliers to decrease the MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity).
Moreover, you don’t need a data analytics system, as it comes already within the e-Kanban. You don’t even need a dedicated person because the operation manager has now the time to work on the data KanbanBOX provides them.
E-Kanban software such as KanbanBOX allows you to exponentially increase the benefits the Kanban provides you because you not only digitalize the manual work (es. Kanban card creation, change status instead of physically moving the card from one board to another) but also gain precious insight to strategize better for the future.
An Example Of Data Analytics: KanbanBOX Maintenance Feature
In KanbanBOX, the possibility to adapt the Kanban Loops according to the statistics is called “Maintenance” and it’ll take you a few minutes per day.
In one single platform, you’ll have the statistics on how your suppliers (internal or external) are performing. Moreover, you’ll see the historical consumption and get suggestions on how to optimize the Kanban card quantity.
Are there any delays? Maybe, the lead time you calculate must change.
Are there any recorded stockouts? You’ll prevent them in the future by increasing the number of Kanban, or the components inside a Kanban.
Is your stock too high? You can reduce the Kanban quantity and in some time the stocks will be leveled out.
Usually, before using the Maintenance feature, our customers would spend from 4 to 10 hours per week to get the same results. To tell the truth, this is the reason why the majority tends not to do this task and not to solve the above-mentioned problems.
Change management is a priority
You might feel ready to move from manual Kanban to electronic one and leverage automatically generated supply chain statistics.
So, what’s next?
Frankly speaking, data are nothing without people governing them.
As lean consultants ourselves, we know that technology can’t do all the work. The company needs the correct mindset to be able to make something bigger out of data.
You need to be ready to change if they suggest you do it.
You also need to be able to evaluate the statistics, because, at the end of the day, you’re the one who knows the real implications of changing your company’s processes.
Ready to embrace the change and optimize operations? We are! Let’s talk.
If not, we suggest you start exploring the e-Kanban world, considering the first and basic advantages coming from digitizing manual activities. Step by step, you can move to the optimization of the whole supply chain thanks to the software data analytics potential. You can start from here.
Watch KanbanBOX Data Analytics in Action!
See how KanbanBOX Maintenance feature can speed up your processes and free up your time!