Are push and pull systems really so different?

Bonney, Maurice; Zhang, Zongmao; Head, M.A.; Tien, C.C; Barson, Richard

doi:10.1016/s0925-5273(98)00094-2

Cited by 54 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This is well supported in the operational literature. Bonney et al (1999) suggest that in practice most systems comprise elements of both push and pull. Pull however cannot be viewed in isolation and whilst it is outside the scope of this paper, the authors recognise that pull is effectively a constituent part of "the larger lean construct" (Hopp and Spearman 2004, p. 144).…”

Section: Planning and Production Control In The Process Industriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Completely Taktless! What Is Pull in the Context of the Process Industries?

Stevenson

Found

2015

Measuring Operations Performance

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The widespread implementation of lean in discrete manufacturing has changed the face of those businesses with mechanisms such as setup reduction, bounded WIP, takt time, level scheduling and other elements of pull production aimed at reducing variation to create flow with minimal inventory, improving lead time, cost and service. While in the process industries, much is written regarding traditional approaches to planning and production control (PPC), the lean paradigm and pull production remain largely unadopted. This paper explores the nature of process industries and inadequacy of existing taxonomies to understand the underlying complexity, which significantly impacts planning and production control. Definitions and principles of pull are considered alongside existing process sector PPC and the fundamentals of demand, capacity and variation, to demonstrate that a contingent approach, which considers the environment is required. A manufacturing case study is used to confirm the underlying complexity and explain how the inherent variation and resulting trade-offs impact the applicability of discrete pull mechanisms with potential process manufacturing pull definition and mechanisms concluded. Furthermore, a pull system implementation in the case company operation is examined and simulated concluding the fundamental importance of sequence to flow and pull in process manufacturing and its impact on capacity, utilisation, waste and service.

show abstract

Section: Planning and Production Control In The Process Industriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is considerable ambiguity (Bonney et al 1999) regarding the definition of pull in the literature with JIT, kanban and pull often used interchangeably (Hopp and Spearman 2004). In the mid 1990s the definition of pull became distorted and synonymous with MTO.…”

Section: Flow and Pullmentioning

confidence: 99%

Completely Taktless! What Is Pull in the Context of the Process Industries?

Stevenson

Found

2015

Measuring Operations Performance

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Production management systems are classified into push production systems (such as Material Requirement Planning, MRP) and pull production systems (such as Lean Production System, LPS) (Deleersnyder et al, 1992;Spearman and Zazanis, 1992;Bonney et al, 1999). The distinction between push and pull system is on how production orders are released to work stations in response to demands (Krishnamurthy et al, 2004).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hybrid strategy decreases inventory over the Kanban policy while maintaining the same service levels (Bonvik et al, 1997). Recently, several studies have compared the performances of push, pull and hybrid system by simulation (Bonvik et al, 1997;Bonney et al, 1999;Corry and Kozan, 2004;Teeravaraprug and Stapholdecha, 2004;Geraghty and Heavey, 2005). They concluded that the hybrid production system outperforms both the push and the pull strategies.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of Production Management Practices and Systems on Business Performance: From the Perspective of the Push-pull Production Systems

Wee

Peng

Yang

et al. 2014

OSCM: An Int. Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Pyke and Cohen (1990) characterised the differences between the push and pull policies in terms of production and order quantity, timing of the production and shipment request, order prioritisation rules and degree of managerial interference. On the other hand, Bonney et al (1999) characterised the push and pull policies in terms of the flow of control information. In a pull system the control information flow typically is in the opposite direction of the material flow.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of the pull and push‐pull policies on the performance of a three‐stage supply chain

Mahapatra

Mahmoodi

2012

International Journal of Production Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We investigate the performance of two common operating policies (i.e., pull and push-pull) for a maketo-stock product in an un-capacitated, three-stage supply chain. The pull policy operates based on periodic orders received from the immediate downstream facility. However, in the push-pull policy, while processes upstream of the order decoupling point are managed by the push policy, the downstream processes are managed by the pull policy. Simulation experiments are conducted to examine the impact of each operating policy under a variety of experimental conditions, characterised by demand uncertainty and lead-time variability. Our results indicate that the relative advantage of the two policies is dependent on the type of uncertainty, the level of uncertainty, the inventory control policy and the performance measures of interest. More specifically, while the push-pull policy results in lower inventory, the pull policy yields a better fill rate. This is in contrast to the notion that the pull policy generally results in superior inventory performance.Our findings suggest that firms should carefully consider the level of uncertainty, the inventory control policy and the performance measures of interest when determining the operating policy. IntroductionIt is challenging to manage a multi-stage supply chain in an environment characterised by uncertain customer demand and variable manufacturing and distribution lead-times. In such environments, the performance of a multistage supply chain is manifested in terms of excess inventory, poor customer service, or both. The push, pull and push-pull (referred to as 'hybrid' here thereof) operating policies are the three principal policies utilised to control production and distribution systems (Karmarkar 1990). Whilst in the push policy sourcing and production and distribution processes are purely based on anticipated demand, or forecast, in the pull policy such processes are triggered after the customer order is received (Spearman and Zazanis 1990). Alternatively, in the hybrid policy, processes upstream of the order decoupling point (i.e. point of differentiation) are managed by the push policy, while the processes downstream of the order decoupling point are managed by the pull policy (Pyke and Cohen 1990).While several studies have examined the push, pull or hybrid policies in a single-stage supply chain, evaluation of the policies in a multi-stage supply chain is rather limited and the insights are either incomplete or case-specific (see Masuchun et al. 2004). This can be attributed to a higher level of operational challenges in multi-stage supply chains than in single-stage chains. As such a comparative assessment of the three policies is difficult because the workings of the three policies are distinctly different, and the criteria for evaluating the performance while accounting for the difference in their workings are not clearly outlined.To address the knowledge gap, we investigate the performance of two of the three policies (i.e. pull and hybrid policies), while ac...

show abstract

Are push and pull systems really so different?

Cited by 54 publications

References 5 publications

Completely Taktless! What Is Pull in the Context of the Process Industries?

Completely Taktless! What Is Pull in the Context of the Process Industries?

The Influence of Production Management Practices and Systems on Business Performance: From the Perspective of the Push-pull Production Systems

Impact of the pull and push‐pull policies on the performance of a three‐stage supply chain

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About