Kamishibai board software: Digital kamishibai cards that stay red until the check is done
A kamishibai board is a rack of two-sided cards, one per recurring check, sorted by how often each is done. A card shows red until its check is done and green after, so an overdue audit is visible across the floor. Kamishibai board software keeps the cards, schedule and findings and turns every red into a tracked action.
How a kamishibai board works
Four rules, and the board runs itself
The board sustains standards with many two-minute looks instead of one long audit a quarter. The rules are the same on a rack of cards and in software.
Write one card per check
Each card is one look at one thing: a torque wrench in its shadow slot, a guard closed, a gauge in calibration. The card says what to look at, where, what good looks like and who takes it. Two to five minutes, done at the workplace, never from a desk.
Sort the cards by cadence and layer
Daily cards go to operators and team leaders, weekly cards to supervisors, monthly cards to managers. That spread of layers is what makes the board a layered process audit: the same standard is checked by people with different distance from the work.
Turn the card when the check is done
Red side out until the audit is done, green side out after. Anyone passing the board sees which checks are late without opening anything. A check that fails stays green for having been done, and the finding is written on the back with an owner.
Read the board at every huddle and reset it each period
The team leader looks at the board in the tier 1 huddle and raises any card still red past its time. Daily cards reset each day, weekly cards on Monday, monthly cards on the first. Once a quarter, retire cards that have been green for a year and write new ones for the problems that appeared.
Who uses it
Who holds the cards, and what each layer is checking
Operator, every shift
Confirm the station is ready and safe before the first part.
Startup check: guards closed, gauges in date, the standard work sheet at the station matches the current revision.
Team leader, daily
Catch the small drift before it becomes a habit.
A 5S spot check on one station, a safety walk, one standard work observation: the step order, the WIP limit, the tools in their shadows.
Supervisor, weekly
Verify that the daily cards are being done honestly and the standards still fit.
A deeper standard work audit on one station and a gauge check, plus a look at this week's findings and whether their owners closed them.
Plant manager or CI lead, monthly
Audit the system, not the station.
Did every layer take its cards? Which cards found nothing for a quarter and should be retired? Which finding keeps coming back and needs an A3?
What a good board looks like
A board that sustains standards, next to one that decays
| Element | A board that works | A board that decays |
|---|---|---|
| Cards | One check each, two to five minutes, with the standard written on the card. | A whole 5S audit on one card that takes forty minutes and gets skipped. |
| Layers | Operators and team leaders hold daily cards, supervisors weekly, managers monthly, names on the board. | Only the supervisor holds cards, so the board is one person's to-do list. |
| Red and green | Red means not done yet. A failed check is still turned green, with the finding written down. | Red means failed, so a finding is hidden until the auditor is sure. |
| Findings | Each finding has an owner and a date and sits next to its card until it is fixed. | Findings are written on the card back and read once a month, if at all. |
| Rhythm | Read in the tier 1 huddle every day; cards reset each period; the card set is reviewed quarterly. | A board full of green from last month that nobody has reset. |
| Record | A time-stamped log of who did each check, when, and what they found, so trends show. | No history beyond the current card side, so the same deviation recurs unnoticed. |
Software earns its place on the last three rows. A rack of cards is good at red and green; it is poor at reminders, findings with owners and a record that shows a pattern. Read the Lean Studio kamishibai board page for a worked week and how to run the first board.
How it works in LeanSuite
What to ask of any kamishibai board software, and what LeanSuite does
One checklist per card, written by the people who do the check
A card that says what good looks like gets the same answer from two auditors. A card that says "check 5S" does not.
Ask the vendor: Can a line lead build or change a card's checklist without IT, and can we start from the paper cards we already have?
LeanSuite: Build the checklist in Lean Creator, or upload the existing Excel or PDF checklist and the AI converts it into a digital form. Each question can be required, flagged, given a follow-up, a photo or points towards a pass mark.
Cards scheduled by cadence to a person, a role or a machine
The board works because the daily card is due every day whether anyone remembers it. The schedule, not willpower, is the method.
Ask the vendor: Can one checklist be scheduled daily for team leaders, weekly for supervisors and monthly for managers, against a specific machine?
LeanSuite: Schedule the audit in Daily Standard Work to a person, a role or an asset with a repeat rule. For a layered process audit, schedule the same checklist once per layer. Assignees get an email reminder before it is due. See Audit Management.
Red until done, visible to everyone
The rack's whole value is that a late check is seen from across the floor. Software that hides it in a report has lost the board.
Ask the vendor: Where does a missed audit show, and who sees it without opening a report?
LeanSuite: Auditors see their checks on a calendar or a Kanban board, and a missed audit shows in red on both. A live dashboard shows completion across the plant, and audit results can be shown on the tier board next to the KPIs.
Done on the floor, with evidence
A card turned green from the office is the board's commonest failure. The check has to happen at the station.
Ask the vendor: Can the auditor complete the card on a phone at the station, with a photo where the standard asks for one?
LeanSuite: Auditors complete checks on a phone or tablet. A question can require a photo, and a flagged answer carries the photo and comment with it. Every audit, finding and action is time-stamped.
Every finding becomes an action with an owner
The card shows the check was done; something else has to show the problem is being fixed. Without it, the board records failure and does nothing about it.
Ask the vendor: When a check fails, what happens next, and who closes the loop?
LeanSuite: From a not-met finding, raise a tag, an idea or a Kaizen in one click. A tag in Daily Issue Management gets an owner, a due date set by its priority, reminders, and waits for verification before it closes. A finding that keeps coming back becomes a Kaizen with the link kept.
A board the team can still see as a board
Some teams want the rack at the line and the record in the software; others want the rack on a screen. Both should be possible.
Ask the vendor: Can we show the cards by cadence, as a board, on a screen at the line?
LeanSuite: The Kamishibai Audit Board template in Lean Studio lays out daily, weekly and monthly card slots with findings as stickies, each with an owner, and Daily Standard Work results can sit on the same tier board as the line's KPIs.
Two things to know before a demo. There is no offline mode: the phone needs a connection to submit a check. And the AI drafts of a checklist are private until you publish them, so nothing is scheduled before a person has read it.
Pitfalls
Where kamishibai boards go wrong, on a rack or in software
Cards that take half an hour
One card carrying a full 5S audit becomes the card nobody has time for, so it is skipped and then faked.
Instead: Split it. A card is one look at one thing, two to five minutes, done where the thing is.
Red means failed
If red means the check failed, auditors turn cards green to avoid the conversation, and findings disappear.
Instead: Red means not done yet. A failed check is turned green for being done, and the finding is written with an owner.
Only one layer holds cards
A board that only the supervisor fills is a to-do list, and it stops when the supervisor is on holiday.
Instead: Operators and team leaders take the daily cards, supervisors weekly, managers monthly, with names on the board.
Findings without owners
The board proves the check was done and nothing else. The same deviation is found every week.
Instead: Every finding gets an owner and a date the day it is found, and the team leader reads open findings in the huddle.
Never resetting, never retiring
A board full of last month's green says nothing about this week, and a card that has found nothing for a year is wasting a look.
Instead: Reset by cadence. Review the card set quarterly and replace retired cards with checks for the problems that appeared.
Auditing the outcome instead of the process
"Is the area tidy?" passes on a good day. "Is the shadow board complete and the daily clean signed?" tells you whether the standard is being kept.
Instead: Write cards about the process condition that produces the outcome, with the standard on the card.
See it on your problem
What you see in a 45-minute LeanSuite demo
A card built end to end
Your paper card as a Lean Creator checklist, with a required photo, a pass mark and a flagged answer that raises a tag.
The schedule
The same checklist scheduled daily to a team leader, weekly to a supervisor and monthly to a manager, against one machine.
The red
What a missed audit looks like on the calendar and the Kanban board, and what a failed check looks like as a tag with an owner and a due date.
The board
The Kamishibai Audit Board in Lean Studio, and audit results next to the line's KPIs on the tier 1 board.
FAQs
Kamishibai board software: buyer questions
Software that does the work of a kamishibai board: it holds one checklist per audit card, schedules each one to a person, a role or a machine on a daily, weekly or monthly cadence, shows which checks are late, and records every finding with an owner and a due date. In LeanSuite that is Audit Management with the checks scheduled in Daily Standard Work.
Kamishibai is a Japanese street theatre that told stories with picture cards. Toyota borrowed the name for boards of audit cards: each card tells the auditor what to look at, and the rack of red and green cards tells everyone whether the checks were done.
A layered process audit (LPA) is the audit system: short, frequent checks of the same process steps by several layers of the organization, each on its own schedule. The kamishibai board is the visual scheduler many plants use to run it. In LeanSuite you build one LPA checklist and schedule it separately for each layer.
Many plants keep the rack at the line because a red card is a signal that can be seen from thirty feet away, and run the checklist, the schedule, the reminders and the findings in the software. That works; what fails is a rack whose findings never become actions.
Two to five minutes. A card is one question or a handful of checks on one station, done on the floor. If a card takes half an hour, split it, or it will be the card that gets skipped.
If the check was not done, the assignee gets an email reminder before it is due and the missed audit shows in red on the calendar and the Kanban board. If the check was done and failed, the auditor flags the answer with a photo and raises a tag, idea or Kaizen from the finding in one click; the tag gets an owner and a due date set by its priority, and it waits for verification before it closes.
Yes. Upload the existing Excel or PDF checklist and the AI converts it into a digital form, or build the checklist in Lean Creator and let the AI draft the questions. Publish it and schedule it in Daily Standard Work to a person, a role or an asset with a repeat rule.
Yes. The printable kamishibai audit cards give you six fold-over T-cards per sheet, a sample week, a blank weekly schedule and a findings log. The Lean Studio board page shows the same board as a sample with how to run it.
FREE RESOURCES
Free templates and posters
Not ready for software yet? Start with these free resources.
- Layered process audit (LPA) checklist20 yes, no or N/A checks at the station, a fixed-on-the-spot box, scores by group and a findings table.
- Standard work audit checklist24 checks of a job against its written standard, ten timed cycles, and each gap sorted by cause before anyone acts.
- 5S audit checklist template25 checks, five per S, scored 1 to 5, with a score summary and a chart of the five S's.
- Leader standard work templateA team leader's daily, weekly and monthly routine with a box per day, follow-ups and a weekly review.
- Gemba walk questions posterNine questions to ask on a gemba walk, in three groups, and the rules of a good walk.
See your audit cards as a schedule, not a rack
Bring your paper cards. We build one as a checklist, schedule it to a layer and show you a red on the floor, in 45 minutes.