Apart from manufacturing, the application of Kanban has been extended to a variety of industries and applications, including software development, services, healthcare, education, retail, and more. David J. Anderson first adapted the Kanban principles for software development and documented this in his 2010 book (Anderson, 2010).
Although Kanban has a wide range of applications, it is important to understand that its principles and practices can be applied to existing workflows and organizational processes. Kanban can be utilized by organizations across different industries for various areas of application, such as:
- Task management
- Workflow automation
- Business process management
- Inventory management
- Business operations management
- Production planning
- IT Service Management
- Escalation Management etc.
Some prominent areas where Kanban is widely used include:
- Customer Service
- Design
- Finance
- Human Resource
- Information Technology
- Learning and Development
- Legal and Compliance
- Marketing
- Operations
- Product Management
- Project Management
- Sales
- Strategy
Many digital Kanban tools and SaaS platforms offer pre-defined workflow templates for each of these prominent solution areas. These AI-generated templates help teams set up workflows with minimal effort, based on the actual work that needs to be planned and executed.