Origin of Kanban and Early Beginnings: 1940s
- The word ‘Kanban’ is made of two Japanese words namely ‘Kan’ which means sign and ‘Ban’ which means ‘Board.’ Thus, it refers to the ‘Visual Card’ or ‘Visual Signal.’
- Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer, started Kanban in the 1940s, as a simple planning system for automotive manufacturing in Toyota Automotive, one of the leading automobile manufacturers. At that time, Kanban was primarily used as a simple plan to control and manage the inventory of the production system.
- The main purpose of developing the Kanban was the lower throughput of the manufacturing facilities of Toyota. Thus, to stand ahead in the market competition, Kanban helped the company manage all types of inventory of finished, semi-finished, and raw materials.
- This helped the organization to achieve its goals along with adaptive planning and flexibility. In this way, Toyota was able to manage all the production systems from the supplier to the end users with optimum efficiency.
History and Origin of the Kanban Methodology
Agile methodology has evolved as a modern approach to managing and delivering projects. It provides us with various methodologies like Scrum and Kanban. In this article, we will go through the history and evolution of Kanban, one of the most popular Agile Methods for Modern Software Development.
Table of Content
- What is Kanban?
- Purpose and Significance
- The Roots of Kanban: 1600s
- Origin of Kanban and Early Beginnings: 1940s
- Evolution of Kanban: 1940-1950s
- Transition to Software Development: 2003-2008
- Some Notable Contributions in Kanban: 2007-2009
- Key Principles of Kanban were Defined: Past 2010
- Conclusion