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Ontraccr blog - Dec 9
December 9, 2022

5 Reasons Why Construction Teams Need Kanban Boards

Kanban is the Japanese word for ‘visual board’ and is a Lean tool developed by Taiichi Ohno, who was an industrial engineer at Toyota in the 1950’s. Since the emergence of the “Kanban Method” in 2007, it has become an extremely popular workflow management tool for defining, managing, and improving processes and tasks within several different aspects of organizations in a variety of different industries.

The beauty in the method is the simplicity it provides. It helps you visualize work, maximize efficiency, and allows for continuous improvement. Each ‘board’ typically represents a segment of work which could represent the different aspects of a construction company. Below I’ve highlighted 6 examples of kanban boards you could create in construction. These boards allow you to organize your company’s operations in a logical manner.

  • Project Management
  • Estimating & Bid Tracking
  • Service & Fleet Management
  • Procurement
  • Customer Relationship Management
  • Task Management

Within each of these boards, you’ll then need to define and create a series of columns, which represent a different stage or status of your workflow. An example of a simple kanban board for a “To do” list can include as little as 3 columns such as “To Do”, “Doing”, and “Done”.

Finally, after you’re done breaking down your board into columns representing each stage of the workflow, you’re now ready to start adding your ‘tasks’ or ‘cards’ to the board. This is where the fun starts because a card can represent anything you want, as long as it’s related to the board.

For example, if you had a board that represented the estimating/lead tracking in your company, the cards would represent either a customer or a project. As a team member works on a task and it is approved, the card moves through the workflow and onto the next column awaiting completion from whoever is responsible for the next stage of the task.

Ideally these cards are customizable and can visually show different information based on what stage they are sitting in. Some solutions which offer workflow automations like OnTraccr allow you to do exactly that, giving you ultimate control over how things should be displayed at any given stage in your workflow. This allows your team to always quickly see the status of everything and focus on putting their attention on higher priority tasks.

Keep reading this blog on Ontraccr.com


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