Apr 2 2013
Some Remarks on the History of Kanban | Alexei Zheglov
See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
“The Kanban method as we know it today has many other influencers and origins besides Ohno and TPS. Two such influencers were of course W. Edwards Deming and Eliyahu Goldratt. Demings 14 Points and the System of Profound Knowledge guide Kanban change agents worldwide. […] Thus the “watershed” of the Kanban method circa 2013 has many “tributaries” of which the TPS is only one. Those other sources should be studied by those how want to apply the Kanban method effectively as change agents.”
It takes nerve to write this sort of things.
Among the tools of TPS, the Kanban system is the only one that has been covered in the media from the beginning to the point of overexposure, because it combines a clever idea with objects you can see and touch.
What some software people did is borrow the names of both Lean and Kanban and apply them to theories with at best a tenuous relationship to the original.
That it worked for them as a marketing technique is to their credit, but I would not advise anyone wanting to learn about the Kanban system to read Deming, Goldratt, or Drucker, who is also referenced.
And TPS is not a “tributary” of the Kanban method. It is the Kanban method that is a tool of TPS, and useful only in the proper context, in conjunction with other tools in a well-thought out implementation.
See on learningagileandlean.wordpress.com
April 2, 2013 @ 12:40 pm
It appears from your remarks that you do not understand or appreciate the fundamental differences between manufacturing and knowledge work domains. Those differences, however, are real and have profound effects on designs of systems as well as the evolution of methods in the domain of knowledge work.
One simply doesn’t need the knowledge of these differences if their plan is to continue to operate in the manufacturing domain, where you clearly have a lot of expertise. However, if that is your plan, would you in this case consider withholding your judgment of people working in other domains as well as their ideas and methods?
I would encourage you to attend the Lean-Kanban North America 2013 conference (http://lkna.leankanban.com/register), where you would get a chance to meet with thought leaders in the Lean knowledge work community. Among them, for example: Michael Kennedy, who is an expert on both Toyota Production System as well Toyota’s product development system, which is Lean, but bears little resemblance to the TPS; and Donald Reinertsen, who discovered many unique insights into the economics of knowledge work, such as the asymmetric payoffs and the value of variability. If you’ve already made other plans for this month, this conference will be held again in San Francisco in the spring of 2014 or you can attend any of its smaller satellite conferences in Europe and Asia in the second half of this year.
April 2, 2013 @ 4:12 pm
Thank you for taking the time to answer and for your kind invitation.
You might notice a difference between your comments and mine. In particular, I make no assertion as to what you may or may not understand or appreciate. That is because I don’t know you, as you don’t know me. Normally, if you feel misunderstood, you say something like “I didn’t make myself clear.”
All I am going by is your own words. They are accurate only if you redefine Kanban to mean whatever you want it to. That is what I read when you say “as we know it today.”
If you knew me, you might be aware that I have worked a decade in the software industry during which I wrote product specs, coded, tested and implemented products, and managed projects. So I am somewhat aware of the differences between this kind of work and manufacturing. And that is why I find it odd that anyone in software would want to borrow techniques from car making.
While I was professionally involved with software, it would not have occurred to me to do it, because it was unnecessary. There were plenty of management thinkers who had come out of the software industry and whose ideas I found more useful than Ohno’s for the task at hand.
For some reason, these thinkers seem to be off the radar screen of the authors of the Lean, scrum, or kanban literature on software development. The most useful to me was Tom DeMarco, who writes about deep, innovative concepts with the wit of Tom Wolfe. I would recommend starting with The Deadline, about software project management. And you can take it from there. His first book is from 1979; his last, 2008.
Another resource, but I can’t imagine you have not heard of him, was Frederick Brooks and his Mythical Man-Month, including his famous audit of the Tower of Babel project.
April 2, 2013 @ 12:54 pm
We use Kanban in a production environment (TPS-Mode) as well as in knowledge work (not only IT) as referenced by Alexei. Both are very much influenced by all the references Alexei is making, so it’s not only taking nerves, what Alexei is writing, it just makes sense IMHO. I just don’t get these dogmatic discussions.
April 4, 2013 @ 2:20 pm
Could you elaborate on what specifically you are doing in production and in knowledge work?
April 2, 2013 @ 2:01 pm
The discussion is important and hits a nerve. Working in IT myself, I also find the ways to adopt Kanban to Software Development (which is 90% knowledge work) sometimes stretching the idea. Partially, because it is a matter of scaling effects, partially because you have no physical material that could be pulled in a Kanban or supermarket style.
Nevertheless, Alexei’s observation points out one important fact. Although Lean is historically closely linked to TPS, they are not identical twins (especially for non-manufacturing contexts), but more a sign of convergent evolution: Same problem, same solution. They same may be true for Kanban, success has many fathers.
I would suggest to look out for a map of the genealogy (might exist already in some textbook). Maybe a visual representation of the influences and dependencies could bring the clarity required to solve this issue.
April 2, 2013 @ 4:43 pm
I see divergence and dilution rather than convergent evolution. As Lean has become popular, consultants, managers, engineers have jumped on the bandwagon and slapped the “Lean” label on all sorts of things, leaving people familiar with TPS scratching their heads.
Overall, it can’t be helped. People always have taken popular words out of context and used them metaphorically. If someone wants to call a technique Kanban and it sells, more power to them.
It is only a problem when it starts interfering with communications about the original technique. With Kanban, it is happening. Google it and the shop floor/logistics entries are buried in a tsunami about software development.
April 4, 2013 @ 10:50 am
You may be right, I would call even myself guilty of such a dilution. Or stretching the biological metaphor of evolution: maybe it is the spawning of new “Lean species” with a common ancestor. Leading to genetical diversity. Not so bad, in my eyes.