ABSTRACT
In contrast, Paired-cell Overlapping Loops of Cards with Authorization (POLCA) would require at most 147 loops—or more than an order of magnitude fewer loops. POLCA was not necessarily designed with the pharmaceutical industry in mind. The POLCA system design rules do recognize that consultants need a way to handle real-world exceptions, and there are techniques such as Safety Cards explained in the design rules. Instead of having a POLCA Board at each work enter, we have four locations throughout the plant where these POLCA Boards are placed for nearby equipment. Each of the manufacturing stages is completed on a different work enter, so each order will run on several pieces of equipment before it is ready for shipment. POLCA was not necessarily designed with the pharmaceutical industry in mind. Product forecast and routing information were loaded into the spreadsheet and we began to identify the POLCA loops.
