Hey everyone, welcome to this lecture. What is hygiene? hygiene care is a Japanese term for load leveling. Dell computers is one of the few companies who are successful in implementing a build to order model of production. You may ask, what is a build to order production model built to order, it's kind of a tongue twister is also referred to as make to order or made to order. It is a production approach where products are not built until a confirmed order for products is received.

Dell has been able to ensure that its products are built or assembled only when a confirmed order is received from the customer. Looking at its success, many businesses are rushing to this model of production. They want to make just what the customers want when they want Ideally, this is the ultimate lean solution. Having said this, the other side of the story is that the customers are not predictable all the time, isn't it? The actual customer orders may vary significantly. If you build product as it is ordered, you may be building huge quantities one week, paying overtime and stressing out your people and equipment.

And if the orders are light the next week, your people will have little to do and your equipment will be underutilized. You will also not be in a position of how much to order from your suppliers. As a result, you will get engaged in stockpiling the maximum possible amount of inventory of those items that the customers may possibly order is this how would you run a lean operation? Of course not. If your organization follows a strict build to order model, it can create piles of inventory. It will also lead to hidden problems, poor quality and a chaotic work environment, leading to very high lead times.

The organization that adopts Lean principles can create streamlined operations. They can give customers better service and better quality by using the tool heijunka. Or in other words, leveling out the production schedule and not always building to order. I junka is the leveling of production by both volume and product mix. It does not build products according to the actual flow of customer orders which can swing up and down wildly. It takes the total volume of orders in a period and levels them out.

So the same amount and mix are being made each day. We will discuss more on how to implement heijunka in your organization in the upcoming lectures. Let's look at the next question. Why heijunka? This is an important question. Why is there a necessity of leveling the production schedule?

There are practically four benefits of using heijunka i junka provides flexibility to make what the customer wants when they want it. This will reduce the inventory levels in any plant and thus in return reduce the associated problems of having high inventory levels. There is always a risk of piling up and inventory of unsold goods. I junka helps in reducing this major risk of these unsold goods as it levels the production process. And it's the cost of owning and storing inventory. Balanced use of labor and machines you're organizing can look at the products that require more work and others that require less work as long as you are able to create a production schedule that is balanced and manageable.

In other words, as long as you create a leveled out schedule, your organization can balance use of labor and machines streamline demand on upstream processes and the plants suppliers. If your organization uses a just in time system for upstream processes, and the suppliers deliver multiple times in a day, the suppliers will get a stable and levels set of orders. This will allow them to reduce inventory and then pass some savings on to the customer so that everyone gets the benefit of leveling. The next important question is, when to use heijunka. An ideal answer to this question is Implement heijunka as a norm in your production process, I junka is not a one time tool. workload leveling is a practice that needs to be followed while scheduling your production process.

With that, we come to the end of this lecture. See you in the next one