What should the work-in-progress limit be?

Start with the number of people who can work on that column at once, or one less. If cards never wait, raise it; if they pile up in review, lower it. The limit is a dial, not a rule from a book, and it belongs on the column header where everyone can see it.

Is a kanban board the same as kanban cards on the shop floor?

They share the idea of a signal that pulls work. Shop-floor kanban cards pull material between processes; a kanban board pulls tasks through stages. The board on this page is the task version.

How is this different from the Kanban widget?

The template is a full board laid out with four columns. The Kanban widget is the same view as a tile you can place on any other board, for example next to a scorecard on a tier board.

How often should the board be reviewed?

Daily, in the huddle, for a minute or two: what moved, what is stuck, what starts next. Clear the Done column weekly.

Kanban or kamishibai: which board do we need?

Kanban tracks one-off work items through stages until they are done. Kamishibai tracks recurring audits on a cadence and resets each period. If the card comes back next week, it is kamishibai; if it is finished once, kanban.

Who owns the kanban board?

The team. One person, often the team leader, keeps it tidy and runs the stand-up; each card has its own owner, and only the owner moves their card.

Lean Studio board · Process & flow

Kanban Board

In one sentence

A kanban board is a visual work board with a column per stage, a card per work item and a limit on how many cards each column may hold, so work is pulled through as capacity frees up rather than pushed in.

A kanban board makes work visible: one card per item, columns for the stages it passes through, and a limit on how many cards a column may hold. When a column is full, the team finishes something before starting something new, which is how a board shortens lead time without anyone working faster.

See it in action Start a 90-day pilot

When to use it

When to use the Kanban Board

For maintenance requests, engineering changes, improvement actions or any queue of work with a backlog.
When the team starts many things and finishes few.
To make a shared queue visible to the people waiting on it.
As the tracker under a tier board for actions that outlive the day.

What is on the board

1
To do
The backlog, in priority order from the top.
2
In progress
Work someone is on now, with a limit on how many cards fit.
3
Review
Done by the doer, waiting for a check or an approval.
4
Done
Finished this week; cleared at the weekly review.

Running it

How to run a Kanban Board session

1
Agree the stages with the team, four to start: to do, in progress, review, done. Add a column only when work actually waits there.
2
Write one card per work item with what, who and a date, and put everything already in progress on the board on day one. It will be more than you thought.
3
Set a work-in-progress limit per column, about the number of people who can work on it. Write it in the header.
4
Stand at the board daily for five minutes and read it right to left, done first. What can we finish? What is blocked? Only then, what starts?
5
When a column is full, nobody starts new work; they help finish something. That is the rule that makes the board work.
6
Weekly, clear done, look at what sat longest, and adjust the limits.
7
Mark a blocked card with a red dot and the reason, and leave it in its column. A blocked card moved back to to-do hides the problem.
8
Good output: fewer items in progress, items finishing in days rather than weeks, and blockers visible on the day they happen.

Worked example · sample data

Worked example

The sample board tracks a maintenance and improvement queue. To do holds six items, with the top three visible: replace the guard on saw 3, label the new rack, order spare belts. In progress has a limit of three and two cards on it: fitting a second charger at station 4 and rewriting the setup sheet. Review, limit two, holds the pallet bay marking, waiting for a sign-off. Done this week shows the roll holder on the rack and the gauge calibration. At the daily stand-up the team read from the right: the pallet bay needed a supervisor's check, so the supervisor did it there and then; with a slot free in progress, the guard on saw 3 was pulled in as the highest safety item. Nothing else started.

The board shown at the top of this page, read through. Invented data, not a customer.

Common mistakes

No limits, or limits nobody holds to. Without a limit it is a to-do list in columns.
Cards with no owner, or one person's name on every card.
Starting new work when a column is full instead of finishing something.
Letting done pile up for months. Clear it weekly so the flow stays visible.
Adding columns for every possible state. Four is enough until work visibly waits somewhere else.
Hiding blocked cards by moving them back to to-do. Leave them where they stopped, with the reason.

How it works in Lean Studio

1
Start from the Kanban Board template, or drop the Kanban widget onto any board.
2
Add a card per work item and drag it across the columns as it moves; colour cards by type or by who owns them.
3
Write the work-in-progress limit in each column header and hold to it: a full column means finish before you start.
4
Save the finished board to My templates so the next team starts from your version.

Lean Studio boards are drawn with stickies, text, shapes (rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, diamond), arrows and charts, and any board can carry the 15 data widgets, from a scorecard to a kanban. See all widgets and boards.

Also in LeanSuite

Where it goes next in LeanSuite

LeanSuite runs tiered meetings on Lean Studio boards: each huddle enters its KPIs, assigns actions and escalates problems on one live screen.

Tags in Daily Issue Management can be dragged between statuses on a Kanban board, and a filter saved as a view pinned for the team. Daily Issue Management
Auditors see their scheduled checks on a calendar or Kanban board and complete them on a phone or tablet. Audit Management
Improvement actions that outgrow the board become Kaizen projects with owners, due dates and a Gantt timeline. Kaizen & Projects

See Tiered Meetings

Open this board in LeanSuite

Kanban Board is one of the 30 ready-made boards in Lean Studio, LeanSuite's whiteboard. Try the interactive demo in your browser with sample data, or pilot LeanSuite on your own lines for 90 days, with the setup done by our team.

See it in action Start a 90-day pilot

What Lean Studio is

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FAQ

Kanban Board: common questions

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