Learn how “heijunka” brings consistency and productivity to companies

You have surely noticed, in many situations, that a lack of regularity creates problems. Life shows us this in simple everyday examples from which we should learn a lesson.

If you need to drink two liters of water a day, you will surely feel ill if you drink 10 liters all at once and then go five days without water.

Or if, to stay in shape, you need 150 minutes of exercise a week, you will probably conclude that it is best to divide it into five sessions of 30 minutes each, one per day, rather than trying to do it all in a single day, which could even cause injuries.

This mindset should also guide companies, but often it does not. It is not uncommon to find companies that, in various processes, suffer a real stop-and-go. They have very intense activity at some moments, generating tremendous stress, and at others they are idle, wasting resources.

Most surprising is that a good part of these variations does not come from external factors but from the organization itself, simply because people do not know the importance and benefits of seeking, as much as possible, constant stability and rhythm in activities, including creating mechanisms that dampen external fluctuations.

In the lean system, there is a concept and practice that brings this necessary idea of “balance” to the organizational universe.

It is heijunka, a Japanese word for “leveling,” which means, in management terms, leveling the type and quantity of production over a period, so that there are neither moments of overload nor of idleness, but rather balance.

Let us take the typical case of end-of-month sales peaks, which occurs in many companies.

I have seen many cases in which 50% of the month's deliveries are concentrated in the last two days of the period. This creates a series of problems, such as errors, overtime and safety risks. It happens in various areas of companies, such as logistics, invoicing and shipping. Production accumulates huge inventories over the month, trying to prepare for this tsunami, but it never keeps up, and sales end up being lost due to the lack of certain products.

When this problem is brought to light, people tend to justify it: “customers order this way; there is no way we can change it.”

However, every time I have dug into this issue together with the teams involved, we ended up realizing that the organization's own policies, such as discounts, promotions, ways of rewarding the sales force, etc., are the main causes of this unevenness. With a few relatively simple actions, this peak could be drastically reduced.

This is what we call volume leveling. The more regular it is, the more productive the operation will be, working at a controlled pace aligned with customer demand.

In heijunka, there is also the concept of mix leveling. This means, ideally, producing every product every day, rather than in large batches once a month.

Of course, to do this, it is necessary to reduce tool changeover, or setup, time whenever a product is changed. And to use a just-in-time system, quickly producing what has actually been sold.

But what about market variations, some of them seasonal, such as products that sell more in summer than in winter? Even in these cases, the company can adopt strategies, such as having flexible lines with products of complementary demand.

Leveling is also important in administrative processes.

For example, whenever a manager sets specific days for certain activities, it ends up creating inventories, waiting, and teams with demand that varies in volume and complexity.

Working in continuous flow, processing each order as it arrives, one by one, in multifunctional work cells, is a possible lean solution for this (and it can also be used in offices).

The benefits of heijunka have been widely proven by the application of lean concepts in the most diverse types of companies.

Acting proactively to level activities, performing them at the most constant pace possible and aligning them with demand, brings predictability and ends up having a positive impact on the quality of work and on the satisfaction of the people involved.

This regularity, brought by heijunka, is the best way to achieve high productivity and consistency in deliveries to customers.

For this to happen, the first step is for managers to realize the importance of this leveling, seeking ways to dampen variations instead of accepting them as natural.