Operational Excellence Tools Blog : ekanban

Ultriva User's Conference highlights

LeanTeam — Thu, 10 May 2007 18:52:00 GMT

In Cupertino, CA today at the Ultriva User's Conference listening to a many customer case study presentations from Emerson Electric, Rexnord, and Dover Inc. What is most compelling in the talks is why each company is using Lean. OK International started on their Lean journey in 2001 to improve customer responsiveness. They've moved delivery times from 6 weeks to 2 weeks using a Lean approach. In fact, OKI never even did manual kanban. They went directly to eKanban to enable that change. OKI discovered Ultriva because one of their top suppliers was also a supplier to Emerson Electric which uses Ultriva. They told OKI that they are a lousy customer and they should seriously consider eKanban from Ultriva. That was one of the main reasons why OKI went directly to eKanban knowing the results Emerson was getting.

Emerson's goal is to have all 31,000 suppliers onto the Ultriva eKanban system by end of September 2008. Emerson is using a shared services IT model to support the roll-out. This helps them integrate with the variety of MRP systems in use around the world. Emerson's roll-out is very ambitious. They are doing supplier kanban, customer kanban, and internal kanban. Schedule-based replenishment is on the horizon.

New Manufacturing Business Technology article on lean replenishment

LeanTeam — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 00:55:00 GMT

...shows that the application of lean thinking and tools to the supply chain is a hot area in the industry. Ultriva, quoted in the article, is a provider of electronic kanban and other solutions built on the Microsoft platform using tools such as SharePoint and SQL Server.

Check out the article at http://www.mbtmag.com/current_issues/2007/feb/busperf2.asp

- Marc from the Lean Team

Emerson is tackling inventory turns with technology

LeanTeam — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:08:00 GMT

Check out the IndustryWeek webcast from January called Emerson Lean: From Strategy to Execution. It's presented by Ray Keefe, VP of Manufacturing at Emerson and Ashley Stirrup, CEO of Ultriva. What is especially insightful is how Emerson has figured out how to tackle the "bullwhip" issue. The recording is available at

http://w.on24.com/r.htm?e=34065&s=1&k=6C52E41DBC0181EF537FCFE2BFD2DD78.

Informative Lean video case study

LeanTeam — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 01:51:00 GMT

One way to quickly understand what Collaborative eKanban is all about is to watch the Flash demo and video case study on www.ultriva.com. It takes 6 minutes total. Both are really well done.