Svalson: Kanban for Inventory Tracking

Svalson produces and sell motorized sliding windows, vertical glass sections and height adjustable glazing. Roger Bergstedt, the Service and Project coordinator at the Swedish company, was kind enough to share his experience of Kanban Tool with us.

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What kind of processes do you manage using Kanban Tool?

We use Kanban Tool for keeping track and ordering material to our production flow.

Please, tell us what our work is about. Could you describe your workflow?

We produce sliding windows made of glass and aluminium, mainly for reception desks.

We use Kanban Tool to keep track of many of our components. A card holds information about our article number, the number of how many components the card represents, the name of our supplier, etc. As an example, one card represents 10 electrical motors, and when all 10 motors have been used, the operator moves the card from the column “In stock” to the column “Place a new order” on their board.

The card is automatically moved to the column “Incoming cards” on the purchase departments board, and an email is also automatically sent to them that a new card has arrived. The purchase department places an order on new motors using the information in the card and adds the purchase order and the order confirmation in the card before returning it to the production departments board “Will be delivered”.

The production department will place the card in the column “In stock” when the new motors arrive. When the motors have been used, the card will be used again as described above to order new motors.

We have connected specific colours on our cards to specific departments to get a good visual of where the card belongs. This helps us to keep control of our stock, what components has been ordered, what will be ordered, when they are expected to arrive, and where the card belongs.

What does your board and card template look like?

Our electrical motors board looks like this:

Click to enlarge in a new window:

The purchasing department's board looks like this:

And the card template, custom fields included, looks like this:

What features or integrations do you value most in Kanban Tool and why?

The ability to move one card from one board to another and then back again gives us the opportunity to use the system the way described above.

What are the most important benefits of using Kanban Tool for you?

We never run out of components in stock when everyone is using Kanban Tool as we have instructed!