A heijunka box is a visual scheduling tool used in heijunka, a Japanese concept for achieving a smoother production flow. Just In Time (JIT) is an inventory strategy implemented to improve the return on investment of a business by reducing in-process inventory and its associated costs. ...

While heijunka refers to the specific concept of achieving production smoothing, the heijunka box is the name of a specific tool used in achieving the aims of heijunka.

The heijunka box is generally a wall schedule, which is divided into a grid of boxes, each one representing a specific unit of time, lines are drawn down the schedule to break the schedule into columns of days or weeks.

Coloured cards representing individual jobs (referred to as kanban cards) , which can vary in duration and complexity are placed on the heijunka box to provide a visual representation of the upcoming production runs. Kanban (in kanji 看板 also in katakana カンバン) is a concept related to the Lean or Just In Time (JIT) production, but these two concepts are not the same thing. ...

The heijunka box makes it easy to see what type of jobs are queued for production. Workers on the process, remove the kanban cards from the front of the schedule as they process the related job.

External links

• http://chohmann.free.fr/lean/heijunka2_us.htm - Explanation of how a heijunka box can be used in achieving smoother production.

See also

• heijunka
• Kanban
• Lean production
• Just In Time