The Benefits of Kanban: What You Need to Know Before You Implement

Optimizing your organization’s workflows and organization is more than using labels and tags–it’s getting every employee on the same page, and that begins with leadership. The Kanban model isn’t just the famous Kanban inventory system. It’s a scheduling system for lean manufacturing, and a framework to implement agile development. 

When tracking team progress, a Kanban board can show what tasks or projects are completed, which ones are in progress, and which ones still need to be started. As your company advances in the Kanban system, your practice can expand to the Portfolio Kanban, which oversees larger business epics. Your organization can determine who is responsible for managing each Portfolio Kanban as new epics are developed and others are completed.

In this post, we’ll explore the benefits of implementing a Kanban in your organization as well as pitfalls to watch out for and strategies for successful implementation.

The Benefits of Kanban

The Kanban method can be applied across all fields of work and industries to help businesses drive down costs and become more efficient through visualized and improved workflows. One of the biggest perks of the Kanban method is that it allows you the flexibility to develop a sustainable, competitive system that empowers your team to accomplish more, faster. 

Better Visibility

'Kanban' is a Japanese term that means 'visual board' or 'visual card.' Visualization is the key principle in the Kanban method, and the Kanban Board integrates visualization into your workflow. Each project has a backlog of tasks as well as a series of processes that each task must complete before it is delivered.

With a Kanban Board, your team can instantly see how the tasks are moving through the process. This allows you to quickly identify bottlenecks as they form.

Improved Efficiency

By visualizing your workflow processes, you can identify inefficiencies immediately. Bottlenecks, stalled tasks, and a surplus of tasks caught in 'work-in-progress' are clearly visible on the Kanban board. As you spot obstacles, you can eliminate them, making your processes run smoother in the long term.

Increased Productivity

In a Kanban system, the focus shifts from rewarding tasks that are started to rewarding tasks that are finished. Cycle time and throughput are the key productivity metrics, with cycle time focusing on how long it takes for a task to pass through a process and throughput measuring how many tasks are delivered during a certain time period.

By tracking your cycle time and throughput, you can see how productivity changes over time. When more tasks are completed in a shorter time, more tasks can get completed.

Reduced Waste

The Kanban system identifies 'waste' as any action that uses resources without adding value (something a customer is willing to pay for). Under these definitions, many activities are not classified as value-adding but are still essential to delivering high-quality products. The main target is non-essential waste.

Taiichi Ohno, the forefather of Kanban and Lean management, identified seven wastes that can be eliminated in a manufacturing environment that relate to time, effort, and materials. Kanban cuts down on waste by reducing waiting time, such as idle tasks and queuing states.

What to Know Before You Implement Kanban

Before you implement the Kanban methodology, it’s important to understand what hurdles can prevent it from being successful in your organization. The two main reasons Kanban implementation can fail are overreaching and false summit plateau.

Overreaching happens when your organization tries to implement Kanban too suddenly, which can become a culture-shock to employees. This culture-shock can cause resistance from your workers and distance between management and floor employees. That disconnect can create tension and hinder Kanban success.

'False summit plateau' is a term that refers to businesses who believe the Kanban methodology can no longer serve them any benefits. Kanban is meant to be a long-lasting solution for businesses, not a short-term fix.

To avoid these obstacles, we recommend implementing the Kanban Maturity Model to acclimate your employees slowly to this new methodology and achieve true business agility.

In Closing

The Kanban system can provide your business with solutions to reduce waste, improve efficiency and productivity, and more with visual cues and cards to keep your team on track. For more information about implementing the Kanban methodology into your organization, check out our resources at Creative Safety Supply today!