Kanban-based business process management can only be effective if it is applied correctly. Sticking post-its on a board isn't enough for a good Kanban system. It's a way of thinking — a shift toward productivity, order and waste elimination through a continual stream of work. The six Kanban rules can help in this situation.
To maintain a consistent flow of work, leadership and personnel must have a high level of trust. However, expectations must be set in order to build a high degree of trust inside the organisation. We need a handbook so that everyone on the team understands how to complete their job correctly. The six Kanban guidelines will assist teams in implementing a successful and effective Kanban system.
If you're serious about Kanban, you'll make sure that these six guidelines are followed consistently in every business process you run.
What exactly is kanban?
Kanban is a well-known framework for agile and DevOps software development. It necessitates real-time capacity communication and complete work openness. On a kanban board, work items are visually depicted, allowing team members to see the status of each piece of work at any moment.
Overview of kanban
Kanban is extremely popular among today's agile and DevOps software teams, however the kanban work approach is over 50 years old. Toyota began streamlining its engineering processes in the late 1940s using the same model that supermarkets used to stock their shelves. Supermarkets have just enough inventory on hand to match customer demand, which improves the flow between the store and the customer.
The supermarket gains significant inventory management efficiency by reducing the quantity of extra stock it must hold at any given moment since inventory levels match consumption patterns. Meanwhile, the store can assure that the product a customer requires is always available.
The purpose of implementing this method on Toyota's production floors was to better align their large inventory levels with real material consumption. Workers would transmit a card, or "kanban," between teams to convey capacity levels on the manufacturing floor (and to suppliers) in real time.
A kanban was passed to the warehouse when a bin of materials utilised on the production line was emptied, detailing what material was needed, the exact amount of this stuff and so on. A new bin of this material would be waiting in the warehouse, which they would then transport to the production floor, who would then send their own kanban to the supplier.
The supplier would also have a bin of this specific item ready to be shipped to the warehouse. While the signalling technology for this process has improved since the 1940s, the core of it remains the same "just in time" (or JIT) manufacturing method.
Key Kanban Concepts and Practises
Of course, the preceding explanation of Kanban boards and cards is rather basic, but it does assist to show how Kanban boards are used in general. You can visualise nearly any process, at any level of your company, by moving cards from left to right through defined steps in a process and expressing task specifics within the cards.
Kanban is highly useful since it is so adaptable, but there are several important Kanban concepts and practises that will help you succeed.
(Note: There are numerous ways to describe Kanban; the goal of putting the basic parts in this order is to simplify the common concepts, not to establish a new definition.)
The Kanban Six Rules
Let's look at the six Kanban guidelines and how they apply to both traditional manufacturing and knowledge work.
1) Never Pass Defective Products
Products that do not satisfy the required standards and degree of quality should not be passed via upstream procedures. Defective products should be taken off the production line and handled separately. This ensures that your consumers receive only high-quality products, reduces waste and reduces customer complaints.
Policies assist in ensuring that the target level of quality is maintained throughout the process. For the manufacture of tangible items, this is quite simple. However, the same may be said about knowledge work.
In software development, for example, applications are subjected to extensive quality assurance testing before being deployed. Functional, regression, integration, performance and stress testing are just a few examples. Only once the team decides that all features and enhancements must pass these levels of testing can they be released to market.
2) Take only what you require.
In order for a Kanban implementation to be successful, downstream processes must only pull what they require. Overproduction is avoided, costs are reduced and operations are more responsive to market demands.
For manufacturing processes, applying this rule as one of the six Kanban rules is fairly simple. We can think of knowledge work as simply working on customer inquiries or orders when they come in. This also entails adhering to your backlog's priority.
3) Produce the Precise Quantity Needed
Taking exactly what you require would result in the production of only the exact quantity of things required. What will you do with the additional inventory if you overproduce? You're stockpiling more expenses. These costs include opportunity costs resulting from the resources and money spent on the item's construction, as well as storage and transportation costs. You also incur the danger of the item degrading or becoming obsolete.
What does this mean in terms of knowledge work? In this case, having a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) mindset is beneficial. You don't need to provide a print function if a consumer wants the ability to download a report from your app. Concentrate on the bare essentials.
You can improve the product as the market requires it or as your product direction directs you.
4) Raise the Bar on Production
To maintain a consistent flow of work, all Kanban system units should only generate the amount of items determined by the limiting contributor's capability. In a manufacturing context, machine A can generate 500 units, but its subsequent step, machine B, can only process 300 units at a time.
Machine B will encounter a bottleneck if we allow machine A to generate 500. To remedy this problem and maintain a steady flow of work, we must limit machine A's production to 300 units. To learn how you may level your manufacturing activities, look into Heijunka, another Lean idea.
One can identify levelling in knowledge work by assessing the capability of each stage in your Kanban. When you see a bottleneck, you can relieve the pressure by adding resources or limiting your work-in-progress based on your limiting contributor.
5) Optimise the production process or fine-tune the production
After the team has completed their Kanban installation, the next goal should be to use their Kanban system to identify pain areas and possibilities for improvement. This would necessitate a closer examination of how work is carried out and the evaluation of their performance.
Lead time, cycle time and throughput are examples of Kanban metrics that can be used to provide a quantitative and objective assessment of a team's work. Teams can use a cumulative flow diagram to identify bottlenecks. These metrics and reports are built-in to online Kanban applications like Kanban Zone. Teams must make informed judgments about how to improve their process using the tools available to them. They must look for waste-producing activity.
This can manifest itself in a variety of ways, including delays, faults, rework and wasteful handoffs, to mention a few. Regular team retrospectives are essential for fine-tuning production because they allow teams to discuss their experiences, pain spots and improvement suggestions, as well as devise solutions to solve them. Because the process is leaner, work-in-progress items drop as inefficiencies reduce.
6) The Process Should Be Stabilised and Rationalised
Your process gets stability as you ensure quality, level production and optimise it. Standardisation is made possible by a reliable procedure. You should document your process so that everyone on your team has a clear idea of how things should be done. Policy should be used to handle any deviations from the process requirements.
Your team will be able to work with predictability and consistency if you make your standards apparent. As you continue to fine-tune your process, your policies and standards may alter. Conduct regular team reviews to keep your process up to date and your Kanban system more stable.
Conclusion
Kanban is one of the most widely used agile software development strategies today. Kanban provides extra work planning and throughput benefits to teams of all sizes.
Kanban converts information that would normally be communicated through words into brain candy. Kanban clarifies what's important by putting all of your "to-dos" into cards on a board, allowing you to stay focused on the most critical tasks. It creates a shared location where everyone working on a project may go to get the most up-to-date information.
Instead of chatting about the work, teams can spend more time completing it. Kanban also helps to eliminate waste and increase value by standardising cues and refining procedures. Not only can you communicate status, but you can also give and receive context for the job by seeing how your work flows inside your team's workflow.
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