Lumiform
Features Solutions Resources Templates Enterprise Pricing
Select a language
Englishen
Deutschde
Françaisfr
Españoles
Português (BR)pt-BR
en
Contact salesLog in
Sign up
Back
Englishen
Deutschde
Françaisfr
Españoles
Português (BR)pt-BR
Features Solutions Resources Templates Enterprise Pricing
Free demo
Log in
en
Book a personal demoView video demoContact sales
Explore
Resource hubCentral repository for all Lumiform resourcesCustomer storiesReal-world successes and experiences with Lumiform.
Learn
Template collectionsComprehensive collections of best practice templates.Topic guidesComprehensive safety, quality, and excellence insights.LexiconDefinitions key to quality, safety, and compliance.
Support
Developer's guideTechnical documentation for developers.Help centerAssistance with onboarding and platform mastery.
Featured reads
Explore our collection of 38 free preventive maintenance checklists

Template collection

Explore our collection of 38 free preventive maintenance checklists

Start reading
Your guide to performing and documenting efficient child care observation

Topic guide

Your guide to performing and documenting efficient child care observation

Start reading
Lumiform as customer journey mapping tool in gastronomy

Success story

Lumiform as customer journey mapping tool in gastronomy

Start reading
Book a personal demoView video demoContact sales
By industry
Food and hospitalityManufacturingConstructionRetailTransport and logisticsFacility managementView all industries
By business needs
Health and safetyQualityOperational excellenceRisk management and complianceView all business needs
By use case
Safety management softwareEnergy audit appForklift inspection appBuilding management softwareVehicle inspection appQMS appKaizen method appProperty inspection appRestaurant inspection appElevator management appProject management softwareFire inspection app
View all app uses
Book a personal demoView video demoContact sales
Overview
Template libraryDiscover over 12,000 free, ready-made and expert proofed templates.
Use cases
CleaningMaintenanceRisk assessmentSupply chainIncident management
Business needs
Health and safety managementQuality managementOperational excellenceRisk management and compliance
Industries
Food and hospitalityManufacturingRetailTransport and logisticsConstructionFacility management
Book a personal demoView video demoContact sales
Overview
Product overviewAll features
Capabilities
Digitize
Form builderMobile AppActions
Automate
Workflow automationApprovalsIntegrations
Transparency and accountability
ReportsAnalytics
Orchestrate
Administration
Book a personal demoView video demoContact sales
Resource center
Topic guide
What is Kanban and how does it improve your business?

What is Kanban and how does it improve your business?

Author NameBy Nicky Liedtke
•
August 28th, 2024
• 9 min read
Hero image

Table of contents

  • The most important Kanban tools & terminology
  • Kanban: 4 Principles to Support Continuous Improvement
  • Why you should use Kanban
  • How a Kanban software can support your needs
Choose from our 10,000+ free, customizable templates.
Browse templates

Summary

Learn more about Kanban terminology and methodology and set up your own productivity tool with our helpful tips.

What is Kanban?

Kanban, a Japanese term meaning “visual board” or “sign,” is a scheduling technique that originated from the Toyota Production System (TPS) in the development of lean manufacturing. Initially used as a precursor to schedule tasks during the Just-in-Time manufacturing process, Kanban is now designed to monitor all processes from supplier to consumer, avoiding disruptions, bottlenecks, and overstocking, and establishing a demand-pull strategy.

In the 1940s, Toyota implemented the Kanban system using cards attached to finished products to signal the need for replenishment. This method was later applied to materials as well. While Taiichi Ōno is considered the originator of the system in production, David J. Anderson applied the technique to IT and software development, making Kanban a popular tool within the software industry and knowledge work in various sectors.

Anderson’s 2010 book Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business provides a comprehensive resource on the Kanban method, which has evolved from a tool for deskless workers to one used to manage processes in almost every imaginable industry.

Kanban does not rely on paper clippings anymore that are attached to a specific product or material. Instead, little cards track work progress in a visual manner on a so-called Kanban board in order to keep everyone up to date and hold them accountable as well.

3 Post-It Notes with the words To-Do, Doing, Done written on them

The most important Kanban tools & terminology

As Kanban is an established and popular system, it has many terms associated with it that you should be familiar with if you want to start using Kanban. Here are some of the most important terminologies and concepts explained:

Kanban Board

Kanban boards have become staples in project management and many are familiar with the visual project management tool that can be used both in a physical form as well as digitally. But what is a Kanban board?

In its most basic manifestation, a Kanban board is divided into three stages that visualize a process:

  1. To-Do
  2. In Progress/WIP
  3. Completed

Of course, many teams opt to add more stages or shuffle them around according to their needs, but whatever sequence you choose will make up the workflow of a project. This way tasks can be managed and moved across the vertical and horizontal planes of a board in order to be executed.

Kanban Card

Within the Kanban framework, tasks are represented by Kanban cards that, same as the board, are either physical or virtual. These cards collect information about tasks, describe them, have due dates attached and are often assigned to a specific executing group or person.

Columns & Swimlanes

In order to structure the board appropriately, Kanban boards are divided into vertical and horizontal planes, also known as columns and swimlanes.

Columns, as the name suggests, divide a board vertically and structure the different steps and statuses from To-Do to Completed with however many other stages you wish to include.

The horizontal planes of a Kanban board are referred to as swimlanes and essentially serve to group different tasks together or seperate them according to their type, owner, etc.

WIP Limits

WIP stands for Work-In-Progress and encompasses every task that has been started and is one of the three most important Kanban metrics. In order to avoid a too high workload WIP limits can help you control what is being worked on and avoid overworking simultaneously.

Throughput

One of the three Kanban metrics, the throughput of your team is defined by the number of completed accomplishments within a process and therefore measures your team’s productivity over a certain period of time.

Lead Time

The last of the three important Kanban metrics is the so-called Lead Time, which measures how much time it takes for a task to be completed.

Cycle Time

Each time a new activity is registered in the In Process/WIP part of your workflow, a new cycle time begins. This time only ends once the Completed/Done stage is reached.

Little’s Law

Combining the three metrics and variables lead time, throughput and WIP, Little’s Law is a theorem that is popularly applied to Kanban in order to relate the three metrics to one another and gain valuable isights.

As such, WIP = Throughput x Lead Time for example, just as Throughput = WIP/Lead Time and Lead Time = WIP/Throughput.

7 Kanban Cadences

Regular and repeated meetings, also known as the Kanban cadences help review your processes, drive change and coordinate the workflow in a steady manner.

These meetings take place daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly, depending on the topics they address. And are generally grouped into the categories of service delivery and improvement or evolution.

SERVICE DELIVERY MEETINGS

  1. Kanban Meeting
  2. Replenishment Meeting
  3. Delivery Planning

EVOLUTION MEETINGS

  1. Service Delivery Review
  2. Risk review
  3. Operations Review
  4. Strategy Review

Kanban: 4 Principles to Support Continuous Improvement

Kanban is a flexible tool that you can customize to your needs. However, to achieve the goal of continuous improvement, it relies on a set of rules, principles, and practices. Here are the four basic Kanban principles that can help you improve your processes:

1. WORKFLOW VISUALIZATION

Visualization is at the core of Kanban. A Kanban board, either physical or virtual, serves as a visual guideline for your workflow. To successfully visualize your processes, break them down into tiny details, assign tasks or responsibilities, and create Kanban cards. Use swimlanes and columns to structure workflows and manage multiple projects or interconnected tasks.

2. WIP LIMITATION

Limiting the number of tasks you work on at a time is vital to ensure a steady and fluid Kanban workflow. As Kanban operates on a pull-based system, a new Kanban card can only enter the In Progress column when the card you are currently working on has been moved to the Review or Done column. This way, you pull new work based on demand.

3. FOCUS ON FLOW

Monitoring your workflow is crucial for continuous improvement. Keep an eye out for bottlenecks or other issues and evaluate your team’s performance by tracking the cycle time and lead times. Address blockages swiftly and strive to improve your flow by continuously measuring and analyzing data.

4. CONTINUOUSLY IMPROVE

Kanban is an evolutionary concept designed to keep you adapting and evolving to create and respond to change. Create a culture of change management, always strive to improve your flow, and collect data to drive improvements scientifically. With Kanban, your organization can flourish.

Mock up of a Kanban board depicting cards, columns and swimlanes

Why you should use Kanban

If you are striving for lean structures and systems, you should give Kanban a go in order to improve your workflows, create smart feedback loops for continuous improvement and be more efficient.

Kanban methodology is a flexible system that can be set up as complicated or as simple as you like and empowers you to fully take charge of your processes, see the big picture and create a holistic productivity approach.

Here are some of the benefits you can expect from implementing Kanban methodology into your organization’s structures for continuous improvement:

1. Increase Efficiency

It is in the very nature of Kanban to break down processes in order to make them as efficient as possible. By using a visual board and implementing WIP limits, you can ensure that your team is working on all that they can handle and keep the flow going smoothly instead of clogging it up with too many tasks.

2. More Productivity

By employing the Kanban metrics cycle time and throughput, you can successfully and tangibly measure productivity across the entire workflow. This helps you identify issues and focus on areas that need improvement.

3. Manage Workloads

Mental health in the workplace is an important topic that has gained more and more attention in recent years, and rightly so. Using Kanban to introduce or improve a pull system lessens the burden for workers and WIP limits ensure that they do not take on more than they can handle to protect them from burnout or other work-related health issues.

4. More Collaboration

Feedback loops and regular meetings, as encouraged by the 7 Kanban cadences, help employees and managers to collaborate more frequently and more efficiently, resulting in even faster problem-solving and process improvement.

5. Less Waste

As Kanban is a lean tool, one of the many benefits of implementing the system into your organization to manage your workflows is that you automatically reduce waste. By cutting out unnecessary steps, and keeping a close eye on bottlenecks, distractions or other wasteful activities, you can run a much more efficient and sustainable business – in every sense of the word.

How a Kanban software can support your needs

Introducing Kanban to your organization can offer significant benefits for both employers and employees. But if you work in a digital environment like software development or network engineering, you may wonder how to implement Kanban without physical tools like paper slips or boards.

Fortunately, Kanban has evolved beyond its origins in manufacturing to become a versatile task management system. While physical boards may still work for small teams, remote work and the COVID-19 pandemic have made digital solutions essential.

To implement Kanban in a digital environment, you can use software tools that offer Kanban boards, cards, and other visualizations. By choosing the right tools and adapting Kanban principles to your workflow, you can streamline your processes, reduce waste, and continuously improve your team’s productivity.

That is why many different Kanban tools have been created and developed over the years that allow companies to create digital Kanban boards via software that everyone can access from any remote location. Virtual boards are further beneficial because

  • Virtual Kanban cards are saved for documentation, whereas paper slips get lost more easily.
  • Virtual cards have more information “storage” and can include many details about tasks that would not fit on a paper card.
  • Paper Kanban cards are not as durable as virtual cards.
  • Most Kanban software feature reminders and other automated tools that signal when a card is overdue or ready to start.
  • WIP limits can be automated and tasks can be set as “dependant on one another. This means that certain tasks can only be added to the WIP column as soon as other tasks are completed.

A hand  with red nailpolish writes the word

 

Try Lumiform

Scale your frontline operations with customizable software that boosts quality, safety, operations and compliance.
Sign up for free

Try Lumiform

Scale your frontline operations with customizable software that boosts quality, safety, operations and compliance.
Sign up for free
Choose from our 10,000+ free, customizable templates.
Browse templates
Author
Nicky Liedtke
Nicky is a content writer and researcher for Lumiform. With her content writing and copywriting experience, she creates high-quality content across a variety of relevant topics. She aims to promote workplace safety, sustainable operational excellence, and continuous improvement in her articles. She is passionate about communicating how technology can be used to have a positive impact on the environment and helping organizations reduce paper waste and achieve their business goals.
Lumiform offers innovative software to streamline frontline workflows. With over 12,000 ready-to-use templates or custom digital forms, organizations can increase efficiency and automate key business processes. The platform is particularly user-friendly, offering advanced reporting capabilities and powerful logic functions that enable automated solutions for standardized workflows. Discover the transformative potential of Lumiform to optimize your frontline workflows. Learn more about the product

Related categories

  • Operational excellence
  • General
  • Manufacturing
  • Business processes
  • Continuous improvement

Related resources

Access a complete set of resources aimed at maximizing safety, quality, and operational excellence, including detailed guides, related templates, and real-world use cases.

Topic guides

Read in-depth guides covering key topics related to this article.

Kaizen Guide - Improve your workflowAll Things Lean: Manufacturing, Management, Principles and MindsetCoaching Employees For Success: The Complete Guide
See all topic guides

Template collections

See comprehensive collections of best practice templates related to this topic.

14 free work instruction templates for every industry
See all template collections

Use cases

Check out how the Lumiform software can be utilized for related use cases.

Kaizen software
See all use cases

Other resources

Explore all the additional resources we offer to assist you in mastering this topic.

5 lean principles: The cycle of continuous improvement10 principles of operational excellenceTo whom is continuous improvement importantWhat is process improvement?5 ways workflow automation streamlines business waste management4 ways process improvement increases profits

Everything you need to boost productivity, safety, and quality.

Get started
Lumiform logo
Platform
HomeSign upProductAll featuresPricingEnterpriseTrust and securityCustomer success offeringsDownload the app
Solutions
IndustriesFood and hospitalityManufacturingConstructionRetailTransport and logisticsFacility management
Business needsHealth and safetyQualityOperational excellenceRisk management and compliance
Uses cases
Learn
Template collectionsTopic guidesLexiconHelp centerJournalInfographicsVideos
Resources
Lumiform templatesby industryby use caseby business needAll categories
Customer storiesDeveloper APIResource hubIntegrations
Company
AboutJobsLegalBook a demoContact sales
© 2025 LumiformTerms and conditionsPrivacyData processingSitemap
App StoreGoogle play