Duisburg-Essen University
Faculty of Transport Systems and Logistics
Master’s degree program Logistics Engineering
Introduction
As a consequence of globalization the companies are faced with rapidly changing
competitive and market conditions in recent years. To counter the pressure of yearly
increasing competi- tive, the companies tries to reduce their production costs, increase
their quality of products as well as the appreciation on the one hand and to save the
sustainability of the company on the other hand. In view of this, the optimization of the
supply chain is the most critical effort of the companies to strengthen their position in
competition in national and international area.
Under this circumstances the logistics becomes to a very important parameter for the
compa- nies to optimize the supply chain activities. Today the production is one of the
most important fields in the are of logistics. The companies tries to implement new
systems with changing the production methods. The environment of the companies in the
last 20 years transformed from a static and monotonous environment to a dynamic one.
The push/MRP system from the
1920s and the newer pull/KANBAN system from the 1960s lost their effectivenesses in
this new environment. It is impossible today, that Companies, which are not able to change
and establish new production systems in their factories according to the new dynamic
environ- ment, compete with other companies. So future-oriented companies tries to
change or de- velope their production systems with the collaboration with the scientific
based organizations such as universities or associations.
In this scientific case study we made firstofall a comparison between the older
pull/KANBAN and the future-based new POLCA-System. Then we implemented the new
RFID technology in the POLCA-System to find the benefits of this case.
March 2014 Sadettin zgn & Adrian Mrozek
Contents
1 Comparison of older PUSH/PULL Systems and POLCA ……………………………….. 5
1.1 History of the production systems ………………………………………………………………… 5
1.2 The POLCA-System – a new production strategy…………………………………………… 5
2 Introducing the POCLA production system …………………………………………………… 9
3 Comparison between Kanban and POLCA production system……………………… 14
4 POLCA combined with RFID ……………………………………………………………………… 17
5 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 23
List of abbreviations
JIT Just-In-Time
MPCS Material Planning and Control Systems
MRP Material Requirements Planning
POLCA Paired-cell Overlapping Loops of Cards with Authorisation
RFID Radio-frequency Identification
List of figures
Figure 1: The different Material Planning and Control Systems (own
representation) …………. 6
Figure 2: Material flow in in a
KANBAN-System ………………………………………………………….. 7
Figure 3: Example of a POLCA card
flow ……………………………………………………………………… 9
Figure 4: Example of a POLCA
card …………………………………………………………………………… 10
Figure 5: Two paired cells with ist POLCA cards…………………………………………………………..
10
Figure 6: Polca card route step by step (own
representation)…………………………………………… 11
Figure 7: Flowchart oft he POLCA system (own
representation) …………………………………….. 12
Figure 8:Diverging production (left) and converging production
(right) …………………………… 15
Figure 9: Production disturb by plannend overproduction (own
representation)………………… 18
Figure 10: Production disturb by disturb at a workstationl (own
representation) ……………….. 19
Figure 11: Production disturb by missing material (own
representation) ………………………….. 20
Figure 12: Production disturb by employee defiencey (own
representation)……………………… 21
List of tables
Table 1: Comparison between Kanban and
POCLA………………………………………………………. 14
Table 2: Comparison betweeen POLCA with cards and RFID (own
representation)………….. 22
1 Comparison of older PUSH/PULL Systems and POLCA
1.1 History of the production systems
The beginning of the modern production systems was in the early 20th century. Great
scien- tifics like Taylor developed modern production systems, which was a breakthrough
in the manufacturing and industrial history. With the implementing of the assembly line in
the Ford- automotive production, it was possible to produce more cars from the same type
to sell them for a competitive price and to increase the turnover of the company. This
method was the basic block of the push/MRP system. After the changing of the
competitive environment after the second world war, Toyota developed a new system,
which called KANBAN, to reduce the production costs with reducing the stocks between
the assembly lines in production. The KANBAN-system was the next milestone in the
manufacturing and industrial history and basic of a new system – the pull principle. The
new system becomes to a popular production
method until the end of the 20th century. In the early 1990th, after the downfall of the
soviet
Russia and the followed ending of the cold war, a new era begun and the borders of each
countries opened to the international markets. The infrastructure improved, new
transportation methods became important. Including this reasons the competitive pressure
increased and now companies are committed to improve their production systems. Today
the companies have dynamic environments and new production systems must be
developed to meet the cus- tomer needs. By the fussion of the push/MRP-system and the
pull/Kanban-system, the POL- CAsystem was born.
1.2 The POLCA-System – a new production strategy
With the changing of the environment, the scientifics and the industries developed a new
pro- duction sytem to meet the different customer needs and demands as soon as possible –
the POLCA Hybrid system, which combined the older PUSH- and PULLstrategies. In
manufac- turing companies, whose produce in high variety and different demands, PULL
Systems have a lot of drawbacks. At the same time, PUSH systems have their own
drawbacks in terms of creating excess inventories and promoting ever longer lead times.
Advocates of the PULL
systems have written extensively about the drawbacks of PUSH systems and elaborated on
how PULL strategies overcome the drawbacks of the PUSH systems ((Spearman and
