Lean Thinking in Software Development : Impacts of Kanban on Projects

The history of software development in a somewhat systematical way has been performed for half a century. Despite this time period, serious failures in software development projects still occur. The pertinent mission of software project management is to continuously achieve more and more successful projects. The application of agile software methods and more recently the integration of Lean practices contribute to this trend of continuous improvement in the software industry. One such area warranting proper empirical evidence is the operational efficiency of projects. In the field of software development, Kanban as a process management method has gained momentum recently, mostly due to its linkages to Lean thinking. However, only a few empirical studies investigate the impacts of Kanban on projects in that particular area. The aim of this doctoral thesis is to improve the understanding of how Kanban impacts on software projects. The research is carried out in the area of Lean thinking, which contains a variety of concepts including Kanban. This article-type thesis conducts a set of case studies expanded with the research strategy of quasi-controlled experiment. The data-gathering techniques of interviews, questionnaires, and different types of observations are used to study the case projects, and thereby to understand the impacts of Kanban on software development projects. The research papers of the thesis are refereed, international journal and conference publications. The results highlight new findings regarding the application of Kanban in the software context. The key findings of the thesis suggest that Kanban is applicable to software development. Despite its several benefits reported in this thesis, the empirical evidence implies that Kanban is not all-encompassing but requires additional practices to keep development projects performing appropriately. Implications for research are given, as well. In addition to these findings, the thesis contributes in the area of plan-driven software development by suggesting implications both for research and practitioners. As a conclusion, Kanban can benefit software development projects but additional practices would increase its potential for the projects.

The effects of Kanban in software development teams : a study of the implementation at Sandvik

In software development organizations there is sometimes a need for change. In order to meet continuously increasing demands from their customers, Sandvik IT Services- SITS, at Sandvik in Sweden, required improving the way they worked with software development. Due to issues like a lot of work in progress and lot of simultaneous tasks for individuals in the teams that caused stress, it was almost impossible to address the question of working with improvements. In order to enable the improvement process Kanban was introduced in the software development teams. Kanban for software development is a change method created by David J. Anderson. The purpose of this thesis is twofold. One part is to assess what effects Kanban has had on the software development teams. The other part is to make a documentation of the Kanban implementation process at SITS. The documentation has been made on the basis of both company internal resources and observations of the Kanban implementation process. The effects of Kanban have been researched with an interview survey to the teams that have gone through the Kick start of the Kanban process. The result of the thesis is also twofold. One part of the result is an extensive documentation of the implementation process of Kanban at SITS. The other part is an assessment of the effects that Kanban has had at SITS. The major effects have been that the teams are experiencing less stress, more focus on quality and better customer collaboration. It is also evident is that it takes time for some effects to evolve when implementing Kanban

Using information flow model to specify the Kanban-controlled shopfloor control system

The implementation of Kanban-based production control systems may be difficult in make-to-order environments such as job shops. The flexible manufacturing approach constitutes a promising solution to adapt the Kanban method to such environments. This paper presents an information flow modelling approach for specifying the operational planning and control functions of the Kanban-controlled shopfloor control system (KSCS) in a flexible manufacturing environment. By decomposing the KSCS control functionalities, we have created the system information flow model through the data flow diagrams of Structured Systems Analysis Methodology. The data flow diagrams serve effective system specifications for communicating the system operations to participants of different disciplines as well as the system model for the design and development of KSCS.

Kanban devs modelling, simulation and verification

Kanban Control Systems (KCS) have become a widely accepted form of inventory and production control. The creation of realistic Discrete Events Simulation (DES) models of KCS require specification of both information and material flow. There are several commercially available simulation packages that are able to model these systems although the use of an application specific modelling language provides means for rapid model development. A new Kanban specific simulation language as well as a high-speed execution engine is verified in this paper through the simulation of a single stage single part type production line. A single stage single part KCS is modelled with exhaustive enumeration of the decision variables of container sizes and number of Kanbans. Several performance measures were used; 95% Confidence Interval (CI) of container Flow Time (FT), mean line throughput as well as the Coefficient of Variance (CV) of FT and Cycle Time were used to determine the robustness of the control system.

Intelligent kanban : evaluation of a supply chain MAS application using benchmarking

The real world challenges of incomplete information access and bounded computational resources in supply chain management motivate us to propose a bottom up approach to supply chain intelligence, built over a widely used reactive card-based replenishments system (kanban). The rationale is to use agent technology to improve the performance of the traditional kanban system while maintaining its recognized usability. Instead of optimizing a system utility function, we encode the system goal in desired behaviours of individual agents that reason about their own behaviours in the local context. This paper discusses a rigorous framework for evaluation of the proposal based on the concept of benchmarking. Preliminary results from these simulations show remarkable improvements over the traditional system. Furthermore, use of the benchmarking framework gives confidence that these results translate into real performance gains in practical implementations.

Experiments toward a practical implementation of an intelligent kanban system

This paper presents laboratory experiments to test a bottom up approach to production control and supply chain management. Built upon the successful traditional kanban (Card) system, the new intelligent system associates a kanban agent to each physical kanban. Instead of relying on demand forecast and planning, kanban agents reason about their own movements to adapt to changing demands. After previous simulations results of the intelligent system showed significant performance improvements over the traditional system, we further use the Auto-ID Laboratory at Cambridge University to test the feasibility of the idea in a realistic manufacturing environment. The results from the experiments demonstrated the superiority on several performance measures of the intelligent system compared to the traditional system used as a benchmark. Moreover, the implementation of the experiments exposed several real world constraints not shown in the simulation study and practical solutions were adopted to address these.

O uso do kanban interno em empresas industriais no Estado de São Paulo

Trata do uso do Kanban Interno por empresas industriais localizadas no Estado de São Paulo, analisando aspectos relativos a: adequação a sistemas produtivos distintos, fase de implantação, treinamento, resultados obtidos, perspectivas de uso, etc ••• Aborda também aspectos da industrialização do Japão, do sistema de relações industriais japoneses e do JIT, procurando mostrar sua relação com o Kanban.

Estudo das técnicas MRP e Kanban, suas integrações e possibilidades de aplicação na indústrias brasileiras

A motivação principal deste trabalho foi analisar aspectos relevantes no processo de tomada de decisão em empresas de manufatura brasileiras sobre o sistema a ser adotado na função de gerenciamento da produção, basicamente seu planejamento, programação e controle. Os objetivos de maximização da eficiência de operação da fábrica, minimização dos custos de fabricação e maximização do nível de serviço aos clientes, visados pelas empresas, são normalmente conflitantes. No desenvolvimento deste projeto procurou-se, dentro do contexto atual do uso dos sistemas de administração da produção nos principais centros produtivos mundiais como os E.U.A. e o Japão, vislumbrar um sistema que pudesse harmonizar os objetivos propostos, de acordo com a realidade brasileira, de instabilidade econômica.

Utilização de 5S, Kanban e Layout para a melhoria do controle de estoque em um varejo de materiais para construção

Many small businesses suffer from a lack of control of goods stored. This lack of control affects other areas of the company as purchase, that can’t buy material in an advanced and accurated way. It also affects services provided by the company, especially when it is a store because for sell something it is necessary to have the material in the right time. Futhermore, the business isn’t able to identify obsolete items in stock, theft and vandalism, loss or damage to materials. All of these disorders can be converted into financial losses that make much difference to a small business that needs to remain competitive in the market facing the giants while generating a profit that allows it to invest in their growth. Therefore, any unnecessary expense is exceedingly harmful and any savings already differentiates it from other companies of similar size. This study deals with the application of production engineering tools as 5S, kanban and layout in a building materials retail to tackle problems that prevent this company to have a stock organized and accurated. Finally, we recorded gains that the company reached with the implementation of part of the solution proposed

Implantação do sistema kanban para elementos de fixação em maquinas de movimentação de terra

Always seeking the maximum profit under the reduced production time and lower number of failures, companies are increasingly evolving and going after continuous improvement in order to remain competitive in the market. Thus, increasingly there is investment in the management system Lean manufacturing. Lean system is very important, because through it, the maximum value is added in the final product. Being measured by the efficiency and reducing failures to zero. In the studied company, Lean manufacturing system came into effect through the kanban system for purchasing, control and distribution of bulk material used in the assembly of the final product, which are earth-moving machines. It is very important to check the great change made in the company with the implementation of kanban. All inventory management becomes visual, elements are arranged in an organized manner, with addresses in structures, calculated in special boxes and finally, assemblers have the guarantee of an item supply, with the distribution cars located on their assembly area. This study participates effectively assuring the supply. Avoiding any failure on the lack of material, non-compliance of delivery times to the customer and maintenance of over-stock or obsolete inventory, in which case both cause financial loss to the company

Integrazione della catena di approvvigionamento attraverso l'applicazione del kanban di fornitura: Il Caso Carpigiani Group

L’internazionalizzazione dei contesti industriali e l’aumento della competizione sopravvenuti nel mondo contemporaneo hanno reso necessari diversi mutamenti nelle attività produttive e legate ai servizi, dalla diversificazione dei prodotti, alla riduzione dei lead time, alla razionalizzazione dei costi a tutti i livelli della supply chain, non solo relativamente alle materie prime e alla diminuzione dei prezzi di vendita, ma anche di tutti i costi indiretti, che assumono un peso importante. La rapidità nella sostituzione dei prodotti e la necessità di contenere al massimo i tempi di risposta spingono sempre più le aziende a rivedere la propria struttura in modo da eliminare gli sprechi. Le imprese operano in un ambiente molto complesso, di conseguenza si rende necessario il coinvolgimento non solo delle funzioni interne ad un’azienda, ma anche di quelle esterne, nell’ottimizzazione delle attività che producono valore e di quelle necessarie che non intervengono direttamente. Tra tutte queste attività si cerca, in questo elaborato, di porre un focus su quelle legate alla gestione delle scorte all’interno della supply chain e all’integrazione dei fornitori nella rete logistica aziendale. Verranno ripresi i concetti fondamentali della teoria di gestione delle scorte, e sarà esposto il percorso intrapreso dall’azienda Carpigiani Group, leader mondiale nella produzione e commercializzazione di macchine per la produzione di gelato artigianale ed “espresso”, di integrazione dei fornitori all’interno della catena di approvvigionamento, attraverso un sistema kanban di fornitura e politiche di approvvigionamento riconducibili al consignment stock, con il fine ultimo di ottimizzare i livelli di scorte a magazzino e di servire le linee produttive con efficacia ed efficienza.

Nihon zenkoku shoshi shūkanban = Japanese national bibliography weekly list.

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