Flow Manufacturing is a set of manufacturing processes and techniques designed to reduce product cycle time through line design and line balancing, reduce product costs by minimizing inventories and increasing inventory turns, and to enhance product quality through total quality control. It is significantly different from other manufacturing processes in that it is a just-in-time (JIT) or demand-based "pull" system that manufactures to customer order.
Integrating Flow Manufacturing with other Oracle Applications such as Work in Process enables you to operate in a multi-mode environment. This means that you can concurrently implement Discrete, Repetitive, and Flow manufacturing methods in the same or different inventory organizations by plant, product family, assembly line, or process. For example, you can produce some of your product families in the Flow environment and others in the Discrete environment.
Flow Manufacturing uses dedicated assembly lines that are designed to support the manufacture of product families through mixed-model production. Mixed-model production enables you to produce any item in a product family in any sequence and in a lot size of one. To ensure optimum resource utilization and the smooth flow of materials, lines are designed to minimize bottlenecks, to eliminate non value-added tasks, and to integrate quality inspections into the process.
When setting up Flow Manufacturing assembly lines, the goal is to set up balanced lines that enable you to meet the expected demand in the shortest possible time. Using "pull" manufacturing, materials flow through the line at a steady rate (known as TAKT time), starting with the final assembly operation.
Mixed-model production is driven by Flow schedules, rather than by Discrete work orders, and uses existing Flow routings. Schedules are sequenced based on customer orders, and component material is managed, and replenished at its point-of-use by kanban bins and signals.
In Oracle Flow Manufacturing, you can both plan and execute kanbans, a method of just-in-time material replenishment that can be applied to the production of items with relatively constant demand and medium to high production volume. Kanban material replenishment is a self-regulating pull system that uses replenishment signals (kanbans) to pull the minimum amount of material possible into production bins when needed to meet demand.
When material is needed, a kanban signal is sent electronically or manually to feeding operations and/or external suppliers. A supplier kanban may automatically trigger a purchase order to a supplier, while an internal kanban results in an inter-organizational transfer.