The present invention provides a method and system for controlling JIT item production via kanbans in a discrete manufacturing production system, wherein items are transformed according to a flow shop comprising a raw material buffer (B RM ) followed by a sequence of production pairs (W 1 ,B 1 ; W j ,B j ; W N ,B N ) comprising one workstation (W j ) and its assigned buffer (B j ); the invention comprising:
a) for each production pair (W j ,B j ), for each specific item type and at given points in time, providing a local buffer threshold parameter denoting the desired safety stock of the items of the specific type in the buffer;
b) for each production pair (W j ,B j ), for each specific item type and at other given points in time, providing a global demand threshold parameter denoting the quantity of items of the specific item type required along the downstream process to satisfy the estimated demand;
c) at each production pair (W j ,B j ), whenever a kanban associated to an item of a specific type switches status, assigning to it one of four priority levels indicating the priority level of the production request of the associated item type, according to the given logical rules by comparing buffer levels with the local buffer threshold parameter and with the global demand threshold parameter;
d) at each production pair, producing an item of a type whose priority level is the highest according to a given priority model.