Rhythm Wheel or Product Wheel is a planning concept for product-mix production and was originally used primarily in the chemical industry.
If a mix of different products has to be manufactured on a production line and relatively few products make up a large part of the capacity utilization, the Rhythm Wheel concept provides for the production requirements of the dominant products to be used as a basis for an EPEI calculation (See in a nutshell in Potentials 4/2014), a production mix is put together that is run through on a rolling basis and leaves a sufficient time slot free in each cycle to manufacture less frequently required products or to carry out maintenance work.
Our tip:
Demand conditions are rarely so stable that the calculated product mix can be maintained over a longer period of time. For this reason, regularly adjust the required product mix based on the future requirements of the next at least four future wheel cycles.
