Design of multi-stage adaptive kanban system

The traditional kanban system with a fixed number of cards does not work satisfactorily in an unstable environment. In the adaptive kanban-type pull control mechanism, the number of kanbans are allowed to change with respect to the inventory and backorder level. It is required to set the threshold values at which cards are added or deleted, which is a part of the design. Previous studies used local search and meta-heuristic methods to design the adaptive kanban system for single stage. In a multi-stage system the cards are circulated within the stage and their presence at designated positions will signal to the neighboring stages about the inventory. In this work, a model of the multi-stage system to traditional and adaptive kanban system is developed. A GA-based search is employed to set the parameters of the system. The results are compared with a traditional kanban system and found signs of improvement.