POLCA (=Paired-cell Overlapping Loops of Cards with Authorization) is a flow-control mechanism originating from the QRM (Quick Response Manufacturing) methodology. It is similar to Kanban or CONWIP but better suited to a high-mix low-volume environment where production orders have different routings.
The POLCA board is a component on the Team Cockpit that shows the available capacity for each paired team (= paired loop) where the FROM team is the Team of this Team Cockpit and the TO team is the team of the next routing step.
Once the capacity on a loop is depleted, it is no longer possible to claim capacity from the next team and to claim the order to start working. This mechanism avoids an overload of work at downstream teams when no capacity is available at those teams. When these downstream teams complete orders, capacity is released again to upstream teams.
POLCA makes use of cards:
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Each loop between teams is allocated an number of cards.
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Each order consumes a number of cards on that loop
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Polca Cards example.
In the screenshot, the selected order (grey, in Buffer) requires 14 cards. However, only 12 cards are available on the loop between the teams CUTTING and DRILLING. Hence, the Claim button is not visible, nudging operators to first start work on other orders for which downstream capacity is available.
24Flow supports a second variant of POLCA, named POLCA Time. The concept is similar to POLCA cards, but now, the capacity per loop is expressed in a time unit (minutes,hours,days) rather than cards. The amount of capacity required from the downstream team for a specific order can then be computed based on the setup and touch time for that team.
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Configuration
The POLCA board component is flexible in its configuration and can also be put on other app pages, besides the Team Cockpit. More specifically it allow to:
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From Team: define the From Team
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Define Alternative From Teams: via drop-down you can change the From Team in the component.
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Time Unit: minutes, hours, days
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Other settings allow you to choose which columns are shown as well as the order of the columns.