Setsuban Kanri

It is specific to organizations where the production model is one of the following: DTO ("Design-to-order"), ETO ("Engineer-to-order"), ATO ("Assembly-to-order") or MTO ("Make-to-order").

The first applications of this model concerned the Japanese railways and the aviation industry, which in the operational management of activities had been referring to a block by block workflow progress management system (what is meant literally by the expression "suishin kusei kōtei kanri" 推進区制工程管理).

Besides, they could enrich and tune the methodological contents with specific implementation tools and gave meaningful contributions to the definition of the methodology itself, which was named Setsuban Kanri from the reading of the ideographic characters 節 (setsu = period/temporal unit) and 番 (ban = ordinal number) + 管理 (kanri = management, control).

Since 2006, thanks to the direct initiative of Akira Kōdate, a Japanese engineer who launched it and promoted its application in Italy with JMAC Europe.

Make-order productions need a continuous monitoring to grant for integration and fair balance in-between the following: a. the X axis represents the made-to-order flow, where attention must be paid to quality, cost, time, and customer satisfaction issues per each order, throughout all work phases – from the order receipt to the delivery to customer.

Choosing a reference time unit called Setsuban (can be days, weeks, decades or months), a number of time units are accounted for in the calendar and the duration of each stage in the working flow is fixed accordingly, and referred to by using delivery indicators called teban (see below).

Delivery turn (Teban手番): The number showing the moment of time when the object planned should reach or leave a specific division or office (e.g. piece to be worked at dept.

The term refers to the set of processes, roles, coordination mechanisms and supporting visual tools which allow the management of processes/organizational functions by "blocks of stepping progress (advancement)".

Inspired by the Toyota Production System (TPS), it facilitates the application of the same approach to make-to-order business companies, while overcoming some of its limits.