Penville plant game

Penville plant game

• Penville plant game is a hands-on interactive
exercise which helps in experiencing the
strengths and challenges of Push, Kanban and
Team based manufacturing
• By manufacturing ball point pens in a traditional
and short cycle production environment
Participants see how the manufacturing systems
affect the WIP, Quality defects and
communication
• It helps in understanding lean manufacturing by
examples of three manufacturing systems: Push,
Kanban and Team based manufacturing
 Parts of pen
1) Metal cap
2) Plastic insert
3) Plastic clicker piece
4) Top barrel
5) Ink cylinder
6) Spring
7) Metal ring
8) Bottom barrel
• 5 kanban cards
• 11 plastic tabs
• 20 shipping boxes
• 5 sheets for recording
• 3 or 5 operators
 5 operators perform the following
operations …..
1) Metal cap
2) two pc plastic clicker put in top barrel
3) Put spring into lead
4) Put it in top barrel
5) Metal piece + bottom barrel
6) Screwing
7) Quality check by clicking (keep it aside if it
doesn’t work , keep it in the shipping box if unit
works, 12 pens in a shipping box)
 3 production systems:
• Push/ Batch
• Kanban /Pull
• Team system/ self balancing system/
flexible system
 What needs to be recorded:
• Total number of finished pens
• Total number of defects
• Total pens in WIP
• Throughput time
 Push/ Batch system
• Relies on each operator producing as many pen subassemblies as
can be produced
• Doesn’t directly associate number of shippable pens with operator’s
performance
• Keeps operators busy
• Does not focus on efficient use of materials or manpower
• Efficiency is assessed by the number of pens produced and not the
number of shippable pens produced
• This creates huge volume of defective work
• Requires line supervisors for line balancing
• Long throughput time
• Lack of agility as the system is unable to respond quickly to the
changes
• Line bottlenecks
• large inventory
 Kanban Card/ Pull system
• Kanban is visual signal / representation or request for a product/
product component
• The end of the line controls the production process to the shipping
box
• Empty box on kanban card pulls/ requests another subassembly
operator to the left
• Each operator shall keep the kanban card to the right. When 1
rectangle is empty, the operator will request to produce 1 pen/
subassembly, when both rectangles are empty, request for 2 pens/
subassemblies
• When both rectangles are full, kanban is full
• The preceding operator will stop producing till one rectangle of the
succeeding operator is empty
• There should not be more than 8 subassemblies in the process
 Kanban Card/ Pull system
• Start production
• After 30 seconds stop operator 5
• Let all the kanban cards fill
• Point pull from the last operator
• Restart the line
• Follow the pull up the line till a new pen is made
• Point out that last operator controls the pull
 Kanban Card/ Pull system
• It controls maximum WIP, eliminates the bottlenecks
• Maximum number of subassemblies is 8
• It focuses on keeping “material busy” not the operators
busy. Hence operators work only if there is a signal on
the kanban card
• When there are problems related to quality or
productivity, the production stops and the line comes to a
standstill
• Throughput time and WIP are lesser
• Defects are detected faster
• end of the line/ last operator controls the pull
 Team system/ flexible system/
self balancing system
• Workers are cross trained for multi tasking
• Operators in a team handle problems arising out of the
production process within the team
• Use of 3 operators n the game (eliminate operator 1 & 5)
so fewer operators perform more operations .
• so cross training of operators for at least three
operations is required for better team functioning
• Instead of a card, empty hand of an operator to right is a
visual signal …
• Most efficient use of labor and materials. Material
doesn’t enter the process till needed
• Helps in worker empowerment and production efficiency
 Team system/ flexible system/
self balancing system
• It has potential for improved quality and
Customer responsiveness by utilizing
flexible manufacturing systems
• Quality is built into the system and not
inspected