Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Milk Kanban

brodzinski.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 173 posts

Re: Milk Kanban

#51

Post by galaxyLogic »

jimnotgym wrote: post #37

> When people say Kanban, they tend to think of a specific set of practices. Whiteboards & sticky notes (both almost universally virtual). When software developers say Kanban, they tend to think of whiteboards. For anyone who works in manufacturing they would have thought about replenishment first. It is completely ubiquitous anywhere where taking something from a location signals a need for replenishment.These days…

So in terms of SW development would that mean we have slips saying "Only 5 Tasks left, come up with new ones"?

Re: Milk Kanban

#52

Post by greatgib »

The milk example looks very stupid in my opinion.

Something more efficient would be something like this:

- there is a closet in the kitchen with extra supplies: milk, sugar, ...

- Kasia goes in the kitchen once per week to do the inventory of remaining supplies. If items <= 1, then she order new extra items for each low in quantity supplies...

Re: Milk Kanban

#53

Post by galaxyLogic »

In the office I worked it was never an issue that we were out of milk. It was that people brought in their own milk cartoons and put them in the fridge, so others could have milk too. Nice. Thanks to whoever brought it!

But then nobody removed that cartoon from fridge so it started to stink, and remained in the fridge still. Then no-one in particual was eager to tackle the bad smell, it definitely was not their job.

Re: Milk Kanban

#54

Post by carreau »

greatgib wrote: post #52

The milk example looks very stupid in my opinion. Something more efficient would be something like this: - there is a closet in the kitchen with extra supplies: milk, sugar, ... - Kasia goes in the kitchen once per week to do the inventory of remaining supplies. If items <= 1, then she order new extra items for each low in quantity supplies...

I feel like you are confusing "more efficient" with "more convenient for me when I use milk because I think the secretary is my maid".

Re: Milk Kanban

#55

Post by zopa »

> And it’s a healthy wake-up call when someone who knows close to nothing about our fancy stuff designs a system that we would unlikely think of.

I can't tell if the author asked Kasia how she came up with the idea? For all we know she's doing an MBA in the evenings and just wrote a paper on the history of just-in-time manufacturing in the Japanese auto industry.

Re: Milk Kanban

#56

Post by greatgib »

carreau wrote: post #54
greatgib wrote: post #52

The milk example looks very stupid in my opinion. Something more efficient would be something like this: - there is a closet in the kitchen with extra supplies: milk, sugar, ... - Kasia goes in the kitchen once per week to do the inventory of remaining supplies. If items <= 1, then she order new extra items for each low in quantity supplies...

I feel like you are confusing "more efficient" with "more convenient for me when I use milk because I think the secretary is my maid".

more efficient and convenient for both in the end. Imagine the burden to have to put a postit on all products, to manage them on your desk, to stack them and remember to count them to reorder. Also because you will not pass your order item by item, like just ordering milk and then sugar 2 days later...

Re: Milk Kanban

#57

Post by darkwater »

carreau wrote: post #54
greatgib wrote: post #52

The milk example looks very stupid in my opinion. Something more efficient would be something like this: - there is a closet in the kitchen with extra supplies: milk, sugar, ... - Kasia goes in the kitchen once per week to do the inventory of remaining supplies. If items <= 1, then she order new extra items for each low in quantity supplies...

I feel like you are confusing "more efficient" with "more convenient for me when I use milk because I think the secretary is my maid".

Which is exactly what most spoiled children^W^W tech workers think of them, unfortunately.

Re: Milk Kanban

#58

Post by pdpi »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #51
jimnotgym wrote: post #37

> When people say Kanban, they tend to think of a specific set of practices. Whiteboards & sticky notes (both almost universally virtual). When software developers say Kanban, they tend to think of whiteboards. For anyone who works in manufacturing they would have thought about replenishment first. It is completely ubiquitous anywhere where taking something from a location signals a need for replenishment.These days…

So in terms of SW development would that mean we have slips saying "Only 5 Tasks left, come up with new ones"?

Only 10% disk space left. Peak memory usage at 90% available RAM. $CRITICAL_PACKAGE version update has been available for 2 months.

Once you see the pattern, it can be used all over the place: Pre-programmed proactive reminders for all sorts of upkeep chores that you don't want to spend mental bandwidth on.

Re: Milk Kanban

#59

Post by jonahx »

greatgib wrote: post #52

The milk example looks very stupid in my opinion. Something more efficient would be something like this: - there is a closet in the kitchen with extra supplies: milk, sugar, ... - Kasia goes in the kitchen once per week to do the inventory of remaining supplies. If items <= 1, then she order new extra items for each low in quantity supplies...

Your proposal probably is an improvement (though there may be some reason it's not feasible in this case -- no closet in the kitchen, etc), but calling the original idea "very stupid" is quite the ungenerous overstatement. It's still clever, still works much better than not having it at all, and is only slightly less efficient that what you're proposing.

Re: Milk Kanban

#60

Post by pfix »

greatgib wrote: post #52

The milk example looks very stupid in my opinion. Something more efficient would be something like this: - there is a closet in the kitchen with extra supplies: milk, sugar, ... - Kasia goes in the kitchen once per week to do the inventory of remaining supplies. If items <= 1, then she order new extra items for each low in quantity supplies...

Why is this more efficient?
Post reply on HN