Stability of a `Signal Kanban' Manufacturing System

Signal kanban production control systems are often used in manufacturing systems with signiicant setup times where more conventional kanban systems are inappropriate. This paper analyzes signal kanban systems under demands with bounded uctuation. It is shown that such systems are stable in the sense that cumulative demand at any time trails cumulative demand by no more than a constant. We determine a maximum time for which a queue of backorders can be nonempty, and present results for setting the signal kanban's reorder 1 point such that the backorder queue is guaranteed to remain empty under the bounded demand uctuation. The results are then extended to consider the case where product orders are serviced in a xed sequence, and we determine a minimum buuer ll level to ensure no backorders will occur.