Multiply
number of (suppliers) X (number of parts they supply) X (number of times part is ordered per month).Each order is a fax. If a manufacturer has 5 suppliers each supplying 20 different part numbers and they send a kanban signal once per week, 400 signals per month are being sent or about 20 faxes per day.
Fax Kanban is not Efficient and not Lean At ten minutes per fax, someone is spending 3.5 hours per day in administration time. That inefficiency results in less time to utilize more suppliers or improve relationships with existing suppliers.
Furthermore, even if 99% of those faxes are trouble free procurement signals, four faxes per month are going to be problematic and dilute entire rationale for a lean manufacturing operation. Suppliers claim they did not receive fax kanban; suppliers cannot make shipment date requested and expedited shipping fees are incurred, or worse, there will be a stockout which will negatively impact customer service levels.
According to Sam Bayer, President of Datacraft Solutions (www.datacraftsolutions.com), leading e-kanban provider in North America, “Signum, our electronic kanban system gives manufacturers a heads up to which of those four faxes might be problem and then frees you up to deal with them because our system has dealt with other 396 kanban signals with zero effort.” Bayer also noted that process improvement with existing suppliers will further reduce lead times and inventory levels and bring more suppliers onto system.
