Kanban in APPPM

Abstract

In any successful project, programme or portfolio, the weight of planning and management is vital to deal with the various types of complexities whether seen from technical, time, goal, social, organisational or legal perspectives. When establishing a complexity management plan to treat a time issue, the team should be under the guidance of a schedule, which allows clarification for issues such as when tasks have to be carried out. For this purpose, various methodologies are used, among them the Kanban philosophy.

Kanban, translated to "visual cards" or "billboard" from Japanese, is a scheduling methodology in which you can maximise the productivity of a team by the optimisation of idle time of each process that results in the completion of a unit or project. It was introduced in 1947, by Taiichi Ohno[1], who was an industrial engineer working for Toyota[2]. It was created to avoid waste, commonly known as Muda[3] in project management terminology, consequently increasing efficiency in product manufacturing chains. Kanban allows the team to visually targeting and removing bottlenecks, identified by avoiding these wastes, to reduce queuing times and increase throughput. It was conceived in such a way that its use was directly related to lean manufacturing systems and the achievement of Just-in-time (JIT) delivery approach.

This article will first provide an introduction and context to the concept of the Kanban methodology. This is followed by an explanation of its use and applications. Thirdly and finally, it will address its limitations, establishing its strengths and weaknesses.