ASKO: Kanban for Grocery Wholesale Distribution

ASKO, a part of NorgesGruppen, is Norway’s largest grocery wholesaler, ensuring effective distribution of products to the grocery, retail convenience goods and institutional catering sectors.
The company's process controller, Lasse Brox, was kind enough to share how Kanban Tool helped his team streamline the deliveries planning and tracking process.

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Please, tell us what your work is about - what kind of processes do you manage using Kanban Tool?

Kanban Tool is our answer to the questions: "What are we working on today?", and "Who's doing what?"

In our line of work we mostly use Kanban Tool for operational tasks, but we have a board for tactical operation as well. I'm a controller of a wholesale distribution, where me and my team not only manage the drivers, but also track our deliveries from packing to their reaching of the destination. In order to do that well, we have a bunch of tasks that repeat daily, weekly or monthly.

We have a color-coded board with tasks for planning (green tasks - second column) and each consecutive shift: morning (yellow tasks - third column), midday (blue tasks - fourth column) and evening (orange tasks - fifth column).

As you can see, the shifts are represented as both distinct colors and process stages, together with columns for tasks in the "Not started", "Started - not operational", "Started - operational", and "Finished" stages. For us, this flow is better than assigning cards to individial agents, since all agents are on a weekly shift rotation.

Besides a standard card template for regular tasks, we have a template for when a truck has been in an accident, with a to-do list of everything the agents needs to check.

What does your board look like?

What adjustments did you make in order to improve your workflow?

With Kanban Tool in our arsenal we were able to discover a lot about how we work - when exactly specific actions need to be taken. Every year, we go through our Recurring Tasks, trying to further optimize the workflow.

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

The Recurring Tasks power-up is an A+ feature, that has transformed our team into solid workforce! We’ve activated nearly every available power-up to enhance the quality and efficiency of our workflow.

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

Before turning to Kanban Tool, we relied on a spreadsheet that was printed out weekly. It was a pain to work with, since the team doesn't work in a single shared location.

With Kanban Tool we have recurring tasks every day of the week, created directly in the right column and assigned to the right work shift, so whatever time an employee starts their work, their day is already layed out. It has made our team better in every way, as when work is good, then everyone is happy.

Kanban Tool has helped us making work easy!