> When people say Kanban, they tend to think of a specific set of practices. Whiteboards & sticky notes (both almost universally virtual).
When software developers say Kanban, they tend to think of whiteboards. For anyone who works in manufacturing they would have thought about replenishment first. It is completely ubiquitous anywhere where taking something from a location signals a need for replenishment.These days it is often virtually, where an ERP sees an order taking something below some level, triggering purchase or manufacture of a replacement.
I understand the literal translation of Kanban is 'coloured badge' btw
Another thing I really like about Kasia's milk system is that it is a zero-emotional overhead communication. Just take the ticket and put it on her desk, and all will be handled.
> In its original meaning, Kanban represented a visual signal. The thing that communicated, well, something. It might have been a need, option, availability, capacity, request, etc.
> the system is self-explanatory
I've always known of this as an "affordance" - An available & apparent interaction between an object and its user.
> And it’s a healthy wake-up call when someone who knows close to nothing about our fancy stuff designs a system that we would unlikely think of.
I can't tell if the author asked Kasia how she came up with the idea? For all we know she's doing an MBA in the evenings and just wrote a paper on the history of just-in-time manufacturing in the Japanese auto industry.
There's a field of study called "mechanism design"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design
...you have to squint a bit, but I've taken it to mean influencing the behavior of unknown or mildly uncooperative participants.
My main example of success was drawing a dotted line with a sharpie about 25% from the bottom of the water filter pitcher in the fridge (back with college roommates).
Basically overnight, the probability of me finding the water pitcher empty in the fridge went from 50% to like 10%.
The visual indicator (with only implied instructions) resulted in positive behavior changes.
Related is "poke-yoke/kaizen" of "mistake proofing, continual improvement, and making problems visible".
Being aware of these fields of study and their techniques can be applied to many areas in work and home.
I like the trash bag bunches where the last three have a little tag on them that say “you’re running low”. Similar system. Very useful.
In the office I worked it was never an issue that we were out of milk. It was that people brought in their own milk cartoons and put them in the fridge, so others could have milk too. Nice. Thanks to whoever brought it!
But then nobody removed that cartoon from fridge so it started to stink, and remained in the fridge still. Then no-one in particual was eager to tackle the bad smell, it definitely was not their job.
While this can be mitigated somewhat by keeping backups on hand, the card helps because it gives you a convenient record of needing to restock, which you can just drop somewhere you know it will be used. Even in personal life that might be a good idea. Dropping an empty box of pasta or dental floss on the ground also serves as a convenient reminder, but it's harder to do with a can of tuna.
This system was recommended to me from an old veteran manufacturing expert that was one of the consultants on an ERP implementation. The brilliance that this brought was anyone could easily pick up the inventory and restocking process. But the people that got in the way of this were people that thought it was "dumb". One person already knew all the bits and pieces and this was just extra work. (she was leaving the company in a few months...) The people that liked this idea were the new people that were replacing the older people, and people that only worked with the inventory periodically, so didn't have ingrained knowledge. (also, the part numbers were inconsistent and many other small issues that new people struggled with)
But, the grumpy and the veterans won out, because they just didn't see the value in making a change like this. sigh
It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not convinced it’s a good one. Office managers (or any kind of managers, really) are hired to remove a class of problems, so other people can focus on their job. This is outsourcing bits and pieces of your responsibilities to random coworkers. That being said, none of it is uncommon in modern corporate workplace.
> A simple index card taped to the last milk carton in a row stating, “Bring me to Kasia.” That’s it.
A callback to indicate completion. Would have been better if the index card was taped to a carton towards the end, but still a few cartons remaining, to provide sufficient advance notice to restock.
It's a shame that some comments in the original post are so toxic and unwelcoming. There are plenty of empathetic people on HN. Well HN is welcome if at least when the topic isn't website standards or a page failing to load in some commenter obscure browser.
The system seems inefficient, as the sticky notes look the same. So Kasia has to go to the cupboard and check what to buy.
If you carry enough inventory to stock out every 6-12 months, this might a good system. If you stock out every week it might become a pain, both for notification and for reordering.
If it were me, I would have a service handle this, they bring in whatever you want and make sure it's topped up.
> It should be as simple as possible (but not simpler)
I have seen this phrase a number of times. What does it mean?
Wow, 3.2 and 2% milk available in the same office? Where do I apply?
This is a form of artifacts as reminders: https://pim.famnit.upr.si/wp/?p=288
Event triggers.
I wouldn't be surprised if milk consumption on that office went down after this. Unless the table was very near, I just wouldn't take the last carton lmao.
I don’t know much about kanban but doesn’t this basically create work for others to bring the milk paper back? I can see how this works and is efficient in a way, but it removes the work for the person to monitor the milk stock.
In other words, issue tracker todo/doing/done lists have nothing to do with kanban.
The milk example looks very stupid in my opinion.
Something more efficient would be something like this:
- there is a closet in the kitchen with extra supplies: milk, sugar, ...
- Kasia goes in the kitchen once per week to do the inventory of remaining supplies. If items <= 1, then she order new extra items for each low in quantity supplies...
> The tricky part is that when you don’t drink milk yourself, it becomes a pain to check the cupboard with milk reserves every now and then to ensure we’re stocked.
If checking the milk reserves once a day is too much of a pain for a person hired as an office manager, the person should self-reflect on his/her choice to take the job.
Cigarette rolling paper comes in a flat pack, from which you take the papers one by one, like a box of Kleenex. Towards the bottom of the pack, there's gonna be an odd-colored piece of paper, after which there still gonna be 10 pieces left in the box. The odd-colored paper tells you that it's time to buy a new pack, but you still have 10 cigarettes' worth.
Edit: found a photo of this phenomenon on r/antiassholedesign https://www.reddit.com/r/antiassholedesign/comments/cfndfa/g...