ABSTRACT
Leveling is the heart and soul of a lean manufacturing system. The key reason for establishing a level pace of production is to enable you to make what is needed when it is needed in the quantity needed. When this is accomplished, you will have a standardized process that, by its very nature, will advise you of problems within the flow and allow you to take immediate corrective action. Moreover, leveling creates the base from which all effective kaizen can be implemented. Thus, load leveling, or heijunka, has incredible potential to respond to many of the variations of production planning and scheduling. The SLMS heijunka is a fairly simple example of this system.
