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Introduction
Lately, the desire to achieve manufacturing excellence has become the driving force behind the development and implementation of various innovative techniques. Foremost among the more successful ones is the just-in-time (JIT) technique. The JIT philosophy evolved from a number of principles such as the elimination of waste, reduction of production cost, total quality control and recognition of employees' abilities (see, for example Hallihan et al., 1997; Keller and Kazazi, 1993; and Sohal et al., 1993). The objective of JIT is the production of defect free goods in the required amount at the right time. One of the first articles relating to JIT, that appeared in the English language, is the paper by Sugimori et al. (1977) in which the authors described the Toyota production system. Since that time, a large number of manufacturing companies in the USA have either implemented the JIT system or are seriously considering implementing it. Sepehri (1986) reported a survey conducted by the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS). It showed that, as early as the early 1980s, 250 companies out of the Fortune 1000 in North America had considered using some form of JIT in their manufacturing processes or services. Since then, the popularity of JIT has spread to medium and even small companies (Cheng and Musaphir, 1993; Gupta and Brennan, 1995). This trend is caused by the success of the Japanese in the area of manufacturing.
The kanban system is an element of just-in-time system that has captured the most attention of researchers. Kanban is a Japanese word that means "visible sign" or card. An advantage of the kanban system is its ability to control production. Other advantages include its simplicity in production scheduling, reduced burden on operators, ease of identification of parts by the kanbans attached to the containers and substantial reduction in paper work. The kanban system is viewed as an information system. The kanban contains information such as the kanban type, component name and number, the station location and the destination station. Monden (1993) and Suzaki (1987) discuss the different types of kanban s and their functions. These include withdrawal kanban s, production kanban s, supplier kanban s, signal kanban s, common kanban s, tunnel kanban s, express kanban s and emergency kanban s.