Turn the day’s demand into a mixed sequence of containers at takt pace, and see how much inventory leaves the plant when big batches give way to leveling.
Pre-sizing and estimating tool: results do not replace design, calculations or reports signed by a licensed professional, nor verification against the applicable codes and standards.
Rows: products; columns: pitch intervals with start time (productive time, breaks not shown). The number is how many cards (containers) to build in the interval. Heuristic result: a good sequence, not necessarily the optimum.
Order of the cards over the day, with planned start and end at takt pace.
Parts in stock on average between production and customer use. Daily batch: each product made once a day; leveled: box sequence.
Sum of all products, in parts, for both ways of scheduling, with the customer using parts at an even rate.
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Heijunka means building the product mix at the pace of demand, in small mixed quantities, instead of big batches of each product. It pays off when you have several products with steady demand, high finished-goods inventory and upstream processes hit by consumption spikes. If changeovers are long, start by cutting setup time.
Takt is the time between two parts the customer orders: in the example, 840 min a day ÷ 840 parts = 60 s. Pitch is the time to fill one container at that pace: 60 s × 20 parts = 20 min. The heijunka box works in pitches because the material handler moves containers, not loose parts.
Each column is a pitch interval with its start time, and each row is a product. The number shows how many cards (containers) the line should build in that interval. In the example, BX-10 shows up 20 times a day and BX-40 only 4, spread across both shifts.
Daily demand comes from the order book or the forecast for the coming weeks divided by production days. Parts per container is the quantity on the production kanban card, usually the pack shipped to the customer or the supermarket. If demand is not a multiple of the container, the calculator rounds up and flags the surplus.
EPEI (every part every interval) is how often the line can make every product, given the time left for changeovers. In the example, a 52 s cycle leaves 112 min a day; four 2-minute changeovers fit every 60 min. If EPEI is longer than the box interval, card-by-card leveling does not fit.
It depends on the mix and container size. In the example, average finished-goods inventory drops from about 288 to 54 parts, because each product is replenished one container at a time. Safety stock is not part of this figure and is still needed.
It uses one changeover time for all products, a constant takt pace and a customer who uses parts evenly. The sequence is a heuristic: good but not necessarily optimal. For lines with component constraints, station workload limits or mandatory color sequences, adjust the sequence by hand starting from this result.
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