How Gilbarco saves up to 20 hours per week thanks to KanbanBOX
Since 1865 Gilbarco has been the world leader of the retail fueling products manufacturing industry, producing fuel and alternative energy dispensers, but also convenience store equipment. Gilbarco products are used worldwide and currently the corporation has 10 plants all over the world.
In Greensboro headquarters, the company has followed a long and enriching lean journey together with a partner of ours. Kaizen week after Kaizen week, they have embraced the lean production.
The legacy e-Kanban as a source of MUDAs (wastes)
At the beginning of our story, the Greensboro plant was already using an electronic kanban made in USA, but it couldn’t integrate with their ERP. There was a lot of manual work to do, moving data from the e-kanban to the ERP. Therefore, to minimize the time-consuming tasks, they were only managing a few kanban codes.
Finally, the legacy software capabilities were quite limited. It didn’t offer the wide-range of features Gilbarco needed. For instance, they asked for
- The resizing of kanban cards based on observed daily demand. Indeed, they had to put too much effort into analyzing consumption manually and keep the kanban cards aligned to real needs. On the other hand, with KanbanBOX always-on maintenance feature this is automatic.
- Disposable or virtual cards, to enable quick resizing. With legacy systems, operators used to waste a lot of time looking for the specific card to delete or to re-pring. KanbanBOX offers throw-away cards with a unique identifier.
- Goods receipt integrated with ERP. When new goods arrived, the operator used to do a double action: inserting the part number in the legacy e-kanban and in the ERP. Gilbarco wanted to scan the barcode with the KanbanBOX App once and see the part number also in the ERP, in real-time.
When Gilbarco met KanbanBOX, their desire was to become more productive and to make their processes more efficient.
First, they wanted to maximize the use of the electronic kanban, involving as many codes as possible. To do it, they also had to overcome the ERP integration issue.
We decided that shown is better than told. We brought Gilbarco to Interroll, a customer of ours, to show how KanbanBOX worked in a plant that was already using our e-kanban software.
Gilbarco standardizes the collaboration processes along the supply chain with KanbanBOX
In 2023 Gilbarco activated KanbanBOX at the Greensboro plant.
At the time, the plant didn’t have any standardized process in place:
- They used to receive random quantities from suppliers
- There weren’t clear and standardized positions where to put components
- It lacked a shared procedure about when to request material replenishment
They started with the implementation of KanbanBOX for the internal kanban, to help move components from the external warehouse to the production plant.
In the meantime, KanbanBOX has been integrated with Gilbarco’s ERP Microsoft AX.
In February 2024, Gilbarco extended the electronic kanban to the supply chain.
Overall, KanbanBOX helped the Greensboro plant standardize how to collaborate both internally and with the supply chain.
To sum up, during 2024 the corporation started using our software to connect:
- external storage and central warehouse
- external storage and production lines
- productions lines, to each other
They arrived to manage around 5.000 components with KanbanBOX.
Gilbarco appreciates the easiness of KanbanBOX that allowed them to autonomously implement many other internal kanbans within the Greensboro plant.
Then, Gilbarco decided to extend KanbanBOX to other plants. Our specialists held the Group Leader course for the two KanbanBOX sponsors in Gilbarco, so that they could lead the KanbanBOX implementation autonomously in a peer-to-peer mode.
Indeed, during 2024 three other plants started: Angi, USA (internal kanban), San Paulo, Brazil (internal kanban) and Salzkotten, Germany (kanban with suppliers).
Altoona is currently using the e-kanban for the internal kanban, production kanban and kanban with suppliers. They’re managing 17.000 kanban cards for 4.000 part numbers. Moreover, this plant is doing the pilot project to start using the new ERP, Dynamics 365, which will integrate with KanbanBOX. This new ERP solution will be implemented in each plant.
The intercompany Kanban in Gilbarco
Gilbarco brought the electronic kanban overseas, including one plant of its European plant, too.
The intercompany Kanban works like an electronic kanban with suppliers, although the supplier is part of the company itself. Indeed the Altoona factory supplies parts to Salzkotten. Both factories use KanbanBOX to see the status of orders, as Salzkotten releases kanban cards and Altoona monitors the Board as supplier.
“KanbanBOX gives us the tools to efficiently deliver material internally between warehouses, supermarkets, and point of use locations as well as monitor inventory levels between our factory and external suppliers. From KanbanBOX’s data and reporting, we can better understand our inventory levels and drive reduction across the factory.”
Patricia Okraski, Lean Business Systems Manager
How Technical Drawings feature helps Gilbarco
For some plants, Gilbarco also wanted to print the assembly instructions together with the related kanban cards. They succeeded in doing so thanks to the native Technical Drawings module of KanbanBOX. Indeed, this feature’s scope is to link specific part numbers to one or more files, be they PDFs or other kinds of files (CAD Drawings, procedures, etc.), according to the company’s needs.
For example, when an operator picks a specific part number as they need to work on it, they change the kanban card status in KanbanBOX: once in the app, they immediately find the related documentation, too and can print it easily.
KanbanBOX as the unique source of data about stock levels
Gilbarco chose PowerBI as the corporate tool for overall data monitoring.
As far as the stock analysis is concerned, KanbanBOX Inventory Count feature will be the unique source of data for the PowerBI dashboards. To do it, we will develop a specific API to retrieve the rows from the KanbanBOX inventory count and send them directly to the Gilbarco PowerBI dashboard.
“Using KanbanBOX, we have created several tug routes to deliver material internally. We use the kanban statuses to track on time delivery, and use the system to see where material is within the factory. The material handlers can quickly scan material, while management can simply track the efficiency metrics.”
Lakosha Whitson, Materials Supervisor
Gilbarco saves 43 days per year thanks to KanbanBOX
So far, Gilbarco is managing 11000 part numbers with KanbanBOX and it has three kinds of kanban in place, plus an intercompany kanban.
The time to place a purchase order has been reduced from 44 sec to 2 sec.
Since the company places around 1700 orders per week, this means that Gilbarco saves up to 20 hours per week and 43 days per year.
“This E-Kanban system provides greater visibility, communication, and process enhancement between customer and supplier. We have simplified the ordering process to allow more time for continuous improvement.”
Luke Mcgann, External Planner