Welcome to the October 2005 edition of our monthly newsletter, Learning to Lean. In this month's edition, we will cover the topic of lean production control and inventory management.

Announcements

Following is a list of all scheduled public workshops remaining in 2005. Each of them is in Carlsbad, CA. We can also bring any of these courses (and many others) to your facility.

Course (click on date to register/read more)	Date
Material Flow and Kanban	Oct 19, 2005
Lean Production Control and Inventory Management	Nov 2, 2005
Kaizen Events: 5S, Visual Controls, and Mistake Proofing	Nov 16, 2005

Click here for details on all of our training offerings, both on-site at your facility and public.

Lean Production Control and Inventory Management

Last month we covered the process of applying lean to administrative processes. In this edition, we will cover a very important aspect of lean, production control and inventory management.

The ideal lean factory would run with one piece flow from receiving materials through manufacturing to shipping finished product. There would be no interruptions in flow, and thus no need to control production between processes and no need to manage inventory (other than perhaps raw materials and finished goods). However, in almost all cases, factories have a mix of one-piece flow and either pull production (or an alternative). In this edition of Learning to Lean, we will talk about the methods for controlling production and managing inventory in a lean organization. This includes pull and kanban as well as load-leveling.

The materials referenced in this newsletter will teach you more about implementing lean effectively. If the articles, links, and books to the left have piqued your interest and you would like to learn more, feel free to call us at 866-559-5598 or visit our website and click on "Contact Us."

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