Drum‐Buffer‐Rope and Buffer Management: Impact on Production Management Study and Practices

Abstract

The drum‐buffer‐rope/buffer management approach radically changes the content of production management practice, research and pedagogy. Documents the major impacts that drum‐buffer‐rope has on production management study and practice. In summary it provides a framework which distils the complexities of material flow into an understandable format; reduces drastically the number of resources that must be explicitly scheduled; warns of potential disruption to the production plan; controls lead time; guides continuous improvement efforts; offers a significantly improved alternative to the kanban production system; aligns local resource performance measures with global organizational performance; and makes traditional job shop capacity management techniques obsolete.