kanban

See also: Kanban

English

Alternative forms

• Kanban

Etymology

From Japanese 看板 (かんばん, ​kanban), from 看 (kan, “visible”) + 板 (“board or card”), developed and first used in the Toyota Production System.

Pronunciation

• (US) enPR: ˈkän-ˌbän
• IPA^(key): /ˈkanban/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

kanban (countable and uncountable, plural kanbans or kanban)

1. (countable) A card containing a set of manufacturing specifications and requirements, used to regulate the supply of components. [from 1980s]
   • 1986, David J. Lu, transl., edited by Japan Management Association, Kanban Just-in Time at Toyota: Management Begins at the Workplace, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 93:

     The sub-assembly line assembles A. It goes to processing line 1 to withdraw part a, and for this purpose it must take the sub-assembly kanban (called withdrawal kanban). It goes to store a, withdraws boxes in the required quantity and removes those kanban (called in-process kanban or production-ordering kanban) that are attached to the boxes.

2. A coordinated manufacturing system using such cards.
   • 1994, Yasuhiro Monden, Toyota Production System: An Integrated Approach to Just-In-Time, Chapman & Hall, →ISBN, page 51:

     However, since so many Japanese industries have adopted Kanban, this problem is diminishing.

3. (by extension) A system to manage, visualise, and improve work across teams, often as part of an agile methodology. [from 2000s]

   kanban board

   • 2014, Joakim Sunden, Marcus Hammarberg, Kanban in Action‎^[1], Manning, →ISBN:

     The first thing that often differentiates a daily standup in a kanban team from other standup meetings is that a kanban team tends to focus on the work on the board rather than on the individual people in the team.

Derived terms

• Scrumban

See also

• just-in-time
• red tag

Further reading

• kanban on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• kanban (development) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “kanban”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Japanese

Romanization

kanban

1. Rōmaji transcription of かんばん