Episode 112: Kanban - An Introduction
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Kanban is a concept related to lean and just-in-time (JIT) production. The Japanese word kanban is a common everyday term meaning "signboard" or "billboard" and lacks the specialized meaning that this word has acquired in English. According to Taiichi Ohno, the man credited with developing JIT, kanban is a means through which JIT is achieved.
It was out of a need to maintain high level of improvements that the kanban system was devised by Toyota. Kanban became an effective tool to support the running of the production system as a whole. In addition, it proved to be an excellent way for promoting improvements because reducing the number of kanban in circulation highlighted problem areas.
In project management, Kanban can be described as a signaling system to trigger action. We welcome Eric Landes (http://aspadvice.com/blogs/elandes/default.aspx) and we get a wonderful introduction to Kanban. We discuss what Kanban is, what its benefits are, how it overlaps with project management, what you see when walking into a Kanban environment, if it works in an environment where no physical products are produced and we introduce you to a great number of resources.
And in our Gizmo's segment we present The Project Perfect Whitepaper Index. It contains about 100 white papers on project management topics. Sign up for the Project Perfect White Paper Mailing List and you will receive an email whenever a new paper is published. Highly recommended.
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A couple of days ago I returned from the 2008 PMO Summit in Orlando Florida. It was 2 days of excellent presentations that have taught me many new and current concepts of Project Management Offices (PMO) but which have also confirmed much of what I knew.