TOC or lean made easier

Companies wanting to establish simplified Lean Thinking on their shop floors – in terms of production scheduling and management – are being invited to try Lilly software’s Visual Easy Lean module. It’s a development of the company’s Visual TOC (Theory of Constraints) system, but focusing only on the buffer aspect of DBR (drum buffer rope) on the constraint resources. Its goal is pulling material through the shop, while minimising inventory but maximising customer responsiveness. Lilly reckons it will be attractive because the system encourages users “to be pragmatic about scheduling”, rather than getting trapped in the dogma of finite working with too many machines and fast operations. The firm also points out that the obverse of that is a failure to focus on opportunity. This system evidently lets you see spare capacity in the system, and consider low price jobs or focus sales accordingly.