Japan invented flow, then refused to use it.
The Genesis on the Factory Floor Long before user stories, sprints and swimlanes, Taiichi Ohno looked at a supermarket and said, "なるほど". In the late 1940s and 1950s, Toyota was struggling to compete with American automotive giants. While visiting the United States, Ohno noticed American supermarkets operated on a pull system: shelves were only restocked with what customers actually bought, rather…
Japan pioneered the concept of flow - Kanban - in manufacturing, but found themselves unable to embrace their own invention. The story begins with Taiichi Ohno, a Toyota executive, who observed the pull system used by American supermarkets in the late 1940s and 1950s. Fascinated by the minimalist approach of only restocking shelves with customer-purchased items, Ohno introduced the concept back to Toyota, calling it Kanban, which translates to "visual card" or "signboard".
This system aimed to revolutionize workflow by ensuring production only occurred when downstream stations needed the materials, thus eliminating waste and reducing cognitive overload.
Kanban quickly became a game-changer for the tech industry, getting digitized and adopted as the backbone of modern agile development. However, the adoption of Kanban hit a roadblock in traditional Japanese workplaces. Despite its potential, many companies were reluctant to leave the comfort of Microsoft Excel. Excel became the go-to tool for everything, from project management to invoicing, due to its flexibility and lack of structured rules.
This cultural attachment to Excel made it difficult for Japanese businesses to adopt Kanban, as the latter required adherence to specific rules and structures that Excel abided by.
The author discovered this paradox during their time at an English school where a massive, cumbersome Excel file was used to track student and staff information. Despite efforts to introduce a Python script and a proper database, the school stubbornly stuck with the outdated spreadsheet, even opting for manual copy-pasting instead of adopting the efficient system.
Similarly, at a video production agency, the introduction of a Kanban project board was met with resistance. The team preferred the familiar vertical structure of a list over the visual flow of the board, and even the added feature of switching to a list view did not sway them.
Ultimately, Japanese businesses have a deep-rooted love for Excel, using it for various purposes due to its perceived safety and flexibility. This attachment to the software made it difficult for them to accept new methods like Kanban, which demanded a change from the comfortable chaos of Excel. Despite the undeniable benefits of Kanban, such as flow, transparency, and order, the traditional Japanese workplace found itself trapped in the comforting embrace of Excel, unwilling to let go and embrace a more efficient system.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.
