Closed Loop Kanban (Ultriva Customer eKanban) is a replenishment infrastructure that enables customers and suppliers to visually manage and control the movement of items via the Internet. To better understand the Kanban flow, see the Kanban Electronic Card Flow page.

The Kanban card is a visual communication tool that must be managed. With Ultriva Customer eKanban system, the “card” is visually represented and is “managed” by the appropriate user. The Web interface tool emulates all the processes that a manual or physical card system would be required to do. It has all the security, controls, and management “flags” to handle the complexity of a manual Kanban system.

Ultriva Customer eKanban provides the customer and supplier process functions. The customer controls the release of the cards and receipt of the goods. The supplier controls the movement of the cards from accepting the Kanban signal through the shipment of the product to the customer.

Notes and documents can be added to the cards during the process. The notes can carry information that gives early warning of a problem, drawing of a part, product certification, and so on.

See the Customer eKanban Walkthrough for a guided tour of help information.

Note: this book covers screens and dialogs specific to the Customer eKanban tool. Thus, even though many screens are common to the eKanban and the CEK, the documentation for any duplicate screens will be found in the Supplier, Internal, & SBR book.