🪧Kanban

The card that authorises making or moving more. In the system 🏛️ Taiichi Ohno describes in 📕 Toyota Production System, a later process takes parts from an earlier one, and the card that travelled with those parts goes back as the order to replace them. No card, no production.

The software sense, a board of columns with limits on work in progress, is a descendant. The limit is the point of it, and it is the part people leave out.

Origin: Japanese 看板, kanban: signboard. Kan is to look at, ban is a board. The everyday word is a shop sign.

The principle underneath is 🧩 Pull systems.