Are You An Entrepreneur? You Need Kanban!

If you’re running or starting up a home business, you will know how overwhelming it can grow to the point that you feel like you are a plate spinner, spinning multiple plates and trying to keep the balance at the same time. In business, many things are happening at once, and all do have to be balanced.

It isn’t as simple as black-and-white, create, and deliver. As an entrepreneur of your own home business, it is your responsibility to ensure that everything your business needs to achieve is achieved and in the correct order and space of time. Using the Kanban method is a way you can maximize productivity for your business.

What is Kanban?

Taiichi Ohno is the man behind the Kanban system. It was an innovation made for the Toyota company. He got this idea after observing supermarkets and how they always managed to have their stock replenished while the items are on sale. In the Toyota company, one issue they had was that certain sections of the production line were not in communication with other sections. This resulted in an inefficient flow of the assembly line. Ohno came up with visual signboards that he called Kanban to transfer the information from one process to the next so that task completion is more efficient. Today, it is a system adopted by many production flow systems, and it has a place in your business.

The Kanban Board

The Kanban board is the actual visual tool that is used to manage the project task flows. The board marks the projects and the stage of completion in a way that’s easy to see and understand. It works like this – each task off of the to-do list is a label on the board. You can then move it on the board as the project makes progress through the levels of completion.

The board’s arrangement is typically in a horizontal flow, from left to right. This means an example of a Kanban board would be columns flowing like this ‘To do>Doing>Done.’ This is a very simplistic example. You can customize these boards to suit your business needs.

Kanban Benefits

The fact that Kanban boards make tasks easily visible, they can help to avoid having too many tasks in progress, which hinders productivity. They also make for easy reference. They simply make a visual representation of everything that needs to be done and how far along each item is on its path to completion. Kanban is the best method of optimizing productivity for people who benefit from visual cues. But they generally benefit any person who has many tasks in motion.

Creating a Kanban Board

The best thing about this system is that you don’t need much to get started with it and you also can choose the means that suits you best. Use anything you would look at regularly to monitor progress. This could be anything, like a board, a daily planner, or even a digital Kanban on your phone. The key is to selects something you will always look at. Sites like Trello and Kanban Flow can be used as a digital Kanban board, and come in mobile versions as well. Setting up your board is a matter of deciding on the flow labels suitable for your business and then arranging them in horizontal or vertical flow. Then you begin adding tasks by listing your ‘to-do’ items. Place the other tasks in their appropriate labels, and you’re good to go!

Revise and Revisit

This method of task management won’t work if you do not continuously come back to your bard and update it and make sure that you have all the information on it that you require. The tool is there to help you focus and to achieve all the tasks that have to get done. However, you will have to remember to keep checking and tracking it. Else, it will do you no good!

Yes, many productivity systems exist today. However,  Kanban is a tool designed just to help make sense of the workflow. This means the Kanban method helps you finish tasks within the deadline. This is a system that will keep you on top of your tasks, is flexible and easy to use. Besides that, it is customizable and helps you translate information with ease. What more could you want from a system?