Take advantage of Kanban Boards

[Ehsanuls55]

One of the ways Bill Palmer and his team were able to overcome the WIP backlog for Parts Unlimited is with

Kanban boards

Kanban, which means " board " in Japanese, allows the team to visualize work. The board is divided into columns that represent the phases of the workflow, typically moving from left to right. Each task is represented by a card.

In the book, Bill's team builds a Kanban board with labels Ready , Doing (for WIP tasks), and Done . Each card has a person assigned to it and is placed on the left side of the board. It is repositioned to the right as work progresses. With such a system, all work is tracked, organized, and prioritized to

Maximize productivity

allowing full visibility into team tasks and minimizing unplanned work.

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4. Manage changes with the Theory of Constraints
Erik briefs Bill on how the Theory of Constraints plays out in large organizations. Most companies have bottlenecks or limitations in their IT and plant operations that can be disruptive and lead to unplanned work. Erik explains that in order to deliver a stable, predictable, and secure IT service , human or non-human resources must be planned to address these constraints and facilitate an uninterrupted flow of work.

In the case of Parts Unlimited, the impact of its many constraints hit Brent, the chief operations engineer and an IT prodigy. Brent was up to his neck in unplanned work, usually trivia and fixes, which caused crucial planned tasks to suffer.

To solve this problem, Bill formed a group that would handle the climbs in place of Brent. In addition, Brent, who previously kept his methods to himself, would now train the group to transfer his knowledge. This allowed the team to

correlate the process

for future reference and freed up Brent's time (or as Bill puts it: freed Brent from firefighting) so he could invest his expertise in higher value tasks.

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