Kanban (from Japanese 看板 «signboard», «plate», «nameplate») is originally a Japanese manufacturing system in which the supply of components is regulated by a special instruction card sent down the production line.
Brief history
The approach was invented and put into practice by Toyota in 1953. Already since 1962 the principles of kanban-method have been implemented at all Toyota factories and production facilities. The author of the idea was a production engineer, Taiichi Ono. The main purpose of the method was to reduce excess inventory (overproduction) at all stages of business.
The principles of the kanban production system in turn were learned from American supermarkets, which used signals of empty baskets to minimize the stock of products in their warehouses. Out of a certain product? It’s time to make a request to the supplier. He’ll bring in a new batch. When ordering, the quantity can be increased according to forecasted demand. But if the demand does not meet expectations, the volume of new orders is gradually reduced. And so on until the optimal value is reached.
Toyota’s kanban rules sounded like:
- When materials are consumed or exhausted, the employee shall return kanban to the supplier of these materials.
- The amount of new materials to be produced must be in line with incoming requests.
- It is forbidden to produce materials without an incoming canban (request).
- The kanban is sent to the consumer together with the produced materials (meaning the lines in production, the consumer is the one who requested the production of the material).
- Sending defective products or materials is prohibited.
- Requests pending processing are strictly limited to optimize operational efficiency.
Kanban here acts as a special marker or feedback indicator.
Lean manufacturing
The kanban management method is often associated with the principle of «lean manufacturing». There are even special methodologies for working with inventory according to kanban: tare and card.
The Basic Principles of Kanban Work in Production:
- The sign has its own color (usually to identify departments or areas of production). It indicates all necessary information about the product/products or order. For example, «Part 1, quantity — 56 pcs, workshop N».
- The kanban is moved along the production line in the same container as the parts or attached to the product.
- Certain norms must be worked out for working with each sign. For example, there should be no more than 2 signs on one workstation at a time.
- The ways of interaction between the specialists, between whom kanban parts are transferred should be greatly simplified (e.g. there are no acceptance certificates, serviceability and technical condition checks), as well as the general processes for moving parts or products.
- The work line should be clearly visible so that the current stage of work can be easily assessed. To realize this approach, the warehouse is usually converted into a kind of conveyor belt. An addressable storage system helps to quickly find the necessary parts or items.
The Result of This Approach:
- Production works with what is available: no stocking of parts, thus reducing overproduction.
- The conveyor line is optimized.
- The load on warehouse workers and the volume of unnecessary movements is reduced.
- The system of interaction between rank-and-file employees is simplified.
- Production processes become linear (they are easier to control and predict).
In many modern production facilities, the kanban approach is still in place, but it has been transformed into an electronic format (integrated into ERP systems — software tools for planning the resources of the organization).
Efficient Development Using Kanban
In turn, kanban is very popular with development teams, small web-agencies and even large market players, as its methodology allows you to flexibly plan the work of individual team members and distribute the workload. In this case, you can achieve the delivery of the project just in time (or very close to the deadline).
To visualize the kanban approach, the so-called kanban board is used. We will talk about it and its application in projects below, but first let’s understand the methodology itself.
Kanban Project Management Methodology
The use of kanban planning is closely related to agile thinking — project management.
Kanban principles in development (can be applied to other areas, e.g. PR departments, marketing):
- Visualize the flow.
- Limit (define) the volume for concurrent flows or tasks.
- Manage the flows (meaning timely status changes to track the overall process).
- Define board rules.
- Analyze activities on a regular basis.
- Improve and optimize processes.
Kanban Project Board
The main objective of implementing kanban in projects is easy visualization and understanding by all participants, easy control and the ability to quickly respond to changes. And also, you can optimize the workload of each team member.
How does it work? Easy! The kanban task board is divided into several columns, each of them corresponds to a job status. The simplest example of a kanban board for a project:
- The «Scheduled» column contains all incoming tasks of the team.
- The «In Progress» column reflects all tasks currently in progress.
- The «Done / Finished» column is for closed or completed tasks.
There can be more columns. But you should realize that along with additional statuses, the complexity of the system may increase significantly.
The most common statuses for development teams are:
- Backlog (all incoming tasks);
- Development (tasks that are in the work of programmers or designers);
- Testing (tasks that have gone to testers);
- At the check (tasks that have been sent to the team leader or project manager for approval);
- Ready (closed tasks that have been tested and verified by the team leader or manager).
The format of signs (stickers) for tasks can be defined individually. But it usually includes:
- The task itself (its brief wording);
- The executor (it can be a department, service or a specific employee);
- Level of importance.
Since there can be a lot of list items, the team leader or employees with the necessary status should regularly update the status of tasks. Only relevant tasks should be in the work (as in production — «no defects»).
It is best if each task is assigned a weight (importance/priority) so that the most important ones get executed first. The status can be assigned by the group leader or by the participants themselves in the process of collective discussion.
The number of tasks in progress should correspond to the volume that the responsible employee or group is able to accomplish. For clarity, the total limit of tasks can be indicated in the column name. This will be a kind of team throughput. You can determine the indicator only by experience, after a few iterations, the value itself will come to the optimal one.
How Kanban Board Tasks are Monitored
The most important indicator of task efficiency is Flow Efficiency.
It is calculated by the formula: 100% * active work / (active work + waiting time)
For example, active work on a task took 5 days, and then the same task hung for another 3 days until it was accepted (closed). The efficiency of the flow will be 100% * 5 / (5+3) = 62.5% (37.5% of the time the task is idle).
When you have gained enough experience (completed tasks), you can estimate the efficiency of work by the average time it takes to work with one task. The total work time is divided by the number of tasks. This will be the «benchmark». Each deviation upwards is a signal to take appropriate and timely action.
If the number of tasks in the backlog is growing, and the limit of tasks in the work is at the limit, it makes sense either to refuse some of the tasks at the input, or to hire additional employees (to increase the execution resource), or to review the efficiency of work on the issued tasks (to reduce the time of their processing).
If all the tasks are in the «In progress» column, it shows scheduling problems — the work on the tasks has obviously stalled. You should take measures and find out why tasks are not closed or changed their status. Alternatively, the iteration cycle is selected incorrectly, or the workload is distributed among the team members incorrectly.
Benefits of Applying Kanban In Projects
- Load planning is as flexible and simple as possible.
- The system easily adapts to changes in priorities and new tasks.
- Involvement of individual team members increases and their productivity grows.
- The workers turn into a team (all decisions in the kanban approach are made by the team, the team leader plays the role of an organizer rather than a line manager).
- Bottlenecks are easily detected.
- The overall process is easily visualized and tracked.
Downsides
- The Kanban approach is difficult to scale to large teams. It is usually effective in groups of up to 10–15 people. Scaling up is acceptable only when tasks are broken down by teams (and each team will have its own kanban board with more detail).
- The system is not suitable for cases where long-range planning is required. It is best suited for small and short-term tasks.
Kanban and Projecto Business Process Management System
In the Projecto management system, the kanban board will have three statuses (columns). They do not change:
- Planned;
- For Approval;
- Completed.
We proceed from the fact that kanban is a tool of the manager, and it is he who controls the overall process. Therefore, such statuses will be the most informative for him.
In each task card we reflect its actual status, deadlines, the project it belongs to, who is responsible for it, as well as additional statuses (indicated by icons).
As the status changes, the task itself moves on the kanban board to the appropriate column.
Instead of the kanban format, you can choose to display it in the form of Gantt charts or a calendar schedule.
