Just in Time Production or Manufacturing is famously known for its origins at Toyota. What is less known is that Henry Ford influenced the development of Just-in-Time Manufacturing. Watch the videos below to learn more.
Just in Time Manufacturing Video Transcript
At Toyota, the base or foundation of their production system on the Just in Time concept, in order to deliver the cars that our customers have ordered as quickly as possible. Just in Time refers to manufacturing only what is needed, when it is needed, and in the amount needed. One tool for implementing Just in Time is the instruction card called a kanban. A worker removes the kanban from the parts container and puts it in to a kanban collection box before taking the first part out of the container. Kanbans are collected, and the information is read by an electronic kanban reader. To replenish necessary parts, purchase orders are issued to parts manufacturers. Kanban is a tool that allows one process to pull or acquire from the proceeding process only what is needed, when it is needed, and in the amount needed. Different models and vehicles of various specifications and options are manufactured on the same production line to better meet the requirements of our customers in a timely manner. Each worker picks up the correct parts and fits them to the car body according to a production instruction sheet which contains numbers, letters, and symbols. The square box on the car roof is called the ID tag. Each ID tag contains information on the parts to be fitted. ID tags are used to send production instructions to robots or to provide data to fail-safe devices to assist workers in selecting the correct parts. Delivering high quality cars to our customers as quickly as possible and thoroughly eliminating muda, or waste, in order to manufacture only what is needed, when it is needed, and in the amount needed, that is Just in Time.
Here’s another video showing how McDonald’s Corporation implemented Just-in-Time Lean Manufacturing in their Hamburger Operations.
McDonald’s Just-in-Time Lean Manufacturing Transcript
One key to McDonald’s global success is fast friendly service. A large component of this famous fast service was its food preparation system. Because they had so many years of success, McDonald’s kitchens were the best and fastest in the business. However, in the late 1980s, the business began to change. Although McDonald’s had a successful system for handling their high volume on its current menu, the changing market place brought about new challenges.
Claire: As people started being more mobile, started being on the road, you know, more of sort of seven in the morning till nine at night and then began spreading their eating out across that pattern. As people got tired of just one or two or three choices of a sandwich and wanted, you know, 6, 10, at one point, we had 21 different sandwiches that a person could choose from at any, you know, at lunch time or at dinner time. We found this operating system that was built for sort of high velocity through port of a very few number of products just completely broke down when you had a lot of products coming through across, you know, all day long.
Narrator: In response to these challenges, McDonald’s designed and implemented its new just in time kitchen system named “Made for You.” This kitchen is a technological overhaul of its previous system designed to improve food quality, allow menu items to be more easily introduced, and to provide superior customer service.
Claire: When I say, “Made for You,” I’m describing what for us is an operating system where every customer’s sandwich or entrees or breakfast, we have breakfast platters, whatever it is that they’ve ordered was made just for them after they ordered it. So it’s nothing that was pre-prepared before they got to the restaurant. A couple of components might be pre-prepared, but each and every sandwich is made for the customer as they order it all at the speed of McDonald’s.
Narrator: The new system would have to fit five major criteria to be successful. Service, which would be 90 seconds or less from ordering to delivery, quality, by meeting high quality customer standards and food safety requirements, food preparation, which should be easier to do right than wrong, people, by increasing job satisfaction, and profitability, by reducing cost yet increasing customer satisfaction. Upon entering a McDonald’s outfitted with the “Made for You” kitchen system, the first change you notice is that the metal warming bins, which have become the standard of fast-food restaurants over the past 40 years are gone. This is because McDonald’s restaurants no longer make their sandwiches in advance.
Male Speaker: When a customer places the order for a hamburger, that order will show up here on the K.V.S. screen. That will signal the crew to take a bun, put it through the special toaster that produces his bun up to 155 degrees in 11 seconds. In that point in time, the product is put on the wrap, and the condiments are added, pickles, onions. At this point in time, the meat is added from a special universal holding cabinet. The product is wrapped and presented for the customer.
Narrator: Heated cabinets called universal holding cabinets were especially designed for the “Made for You” system.
Male Speaker: The universal holding cabinets allow us to handle the different components in meat products that we need for all of our sandwiches at temperatures that would be very much as if they had just come off the grill for up to 20 minutes.
Narrator: Another major example of technological advancement in the new “Made for You” kitchen is the implementation of McDonald’s rapid speed toaster, which toasts buns in only 11 seconds.
Male Speaker: A prior to “Made for You” a standard state-of-the-art was about a 24-second toaster and it would take almost a half a minute to be able to get a bun and move it through this process and have the bun at the acceptable temperature, which for us is between 155 and 160 degrees. But with the combination of the technologies that are built into the toaster and also changes in the formulation that we made to the bun, it allows us now to produce a product that comes to our standards within 11 seconds and there was a major linchpin in “Made for You” and really a major change in toasting in the quick service restaurant industry.
Narrator: When an order is placed, it is routed to the kitchen and appears on a kitchen video system monitor that is visible to the whole crew.
Male Speaker: When a customer order sa product to the front counter, if they order a value meal, the only product that actually comes back to the kitchen is the product that the customer has ordered and it will come back also with any special instructions with a cheeseburger with no pickle or no onion or a double ketchup, any way the customer orders it will come back here for the crew.
Narrator: But even before the order is placed, the computer has already been working. It monitors customer traffic day to day throughout the restaurant in an effort to determine the flow of orders. The computer can then predict key times when business will increase and what food items are typically ordered during these times. The computer then generates orders for best selling items, creating a buffer of products that are ordered in peak times. This helps employees get ahead during a rush. The computer also monitors employee output.
Male Speaker: We have the ability to run two different sides of production under “Made for You” and the P.O.S. system will know who the next person is going to best be able to produce that product and will automatically route it to the side that’s going to be able to get that product to the customer fast enough. So along with just routing the product, it also monitors the overall speed in which product is being produced, which allows us to get the maximum productivity out of each of our crew people.
Narrator: The “Made for You” system works like this. A customer places an order and it appears on a screen in the sandwich prep area. A bun is placed in the rapid speed toaster. And during the next 11 seconds, a crew member places the sandwich wrap on the kitchen counter. When the bun comes out, it’s placed on a wrapper and dressed with the appropriate items. Meat from the universal holding cabinet is the finishing touch to the sandwich. Then it’s wrapped and passed over the counter to a crew member who immediately hands a freshly cooked hot sandwich to the customer. This entire assembly process should take 15 seconds or less.