Since departing Corbis, I’ve had so many small tasks and projects going on that I’ve been struggling to keep track of everything. The usual strategy of keeping to-do lists on the whiteboard just hasn’t been cutting it. So, I’ve put up a small personal heijunka board, complete with kanban limits to manage things.
The green tickets represent outcomes (goals or tasks, aka requirements). Most goals can be broken up into a number of smaller tasks, and those are the yellow tickets. As usual, the red tickets are problems i.e. andon lights.
Since the task types are heterogeneous, there’s no use for any detailed workflow, so I simply have an In-WIP-Out sequence for each level of task decomposition.
On the left, I have three levels of backlog, by priority. Backlog size decreases as priority increases. P1 are things that need to be done ASAP. P2 are important things that are not time-sensitive yet. P3 is stuff I know I need to do, but not right away. Any more stuff than that is too much to manage. If the board is full, and a new goal is not more important than something already up there, it just falls out of consideration. I figure that I can reasonably manage two goals at a time. If I get tired of working on one thing, or I get blocked (waiting for an event, retail hours, etc.), I can work on the other. More than two would just accumulate inventory, and that’s what the P1 queue is for.
JD | 30-Jan-08 at 2:36 am | Permalink
I like the pull-through approach, the at a glance view, and the respect for time and capacity.
Shane P. Schulte | 04-Feb-08 at 12:16 pm | Permalink
??? Since departing Corbis? Did I miss something?
Corey Ladas | 04-Feb-08 at 12:29 pm | Permalink
Hi Shane,
I’m just a consultant. I did what I set out to do at Corbis, so I wrapped it up. I will have some more news about such things shortly.
-c
Google page rank of 5 « Contour Line | 06-Mar-08 at 12:20 pm | Permalink
[...] can also see Market Systems Engineering, making up the set. Part of Market Systems Engineering is heijunka, production smoothing. This operates in part by adjusting marketing and advertising. If demand is [...]
Vince Kucala | 22-Aug-08 at 10:44 am | Permalink
HELLO,
I have been working a LSS Green belt project and am looking for a Production Leveling Software tool so that I could build an electronic heijunka board, does anyone know of such a software application?
Thanks Vince
James Munn | 30-Mar-10 at 7:09 am | Permalink
@Vince, if it’s one thing I’ve learned about Lean, don’t be too quick to jump to a software solution. Sometimes a “pencil and paper” system (or Excel) does the trick better and more efficiently. Also, those systems are a lot easier to change on the fly than software systems (especially when your original developers have moved on to the next project).
dicyArourry | 05-May-10 at 12:34 am | Permalink
http://imgwebsearch.com/35357/.....sinoss.png
William Lux | 04-Nov-11 at 7:51 am | Permalink
Nice – Two features I really like are the three priority columns with the inverse relationship between immediacy and WIP, and the way you represent stories and their subtasks. Well done, and thanks for sharing.