Word.ws English Dictionary

kanban

/ˈkanban/

kanban noun: a card containing a set of manufacturing specifications and requirements, used to regulate the supply of components.

kanban: Hands holding three sticky notes labeled To Do, Doing, and Done in a workspace
Photo by Eden Constantino on Unsplash

Noun (1)

kanban (countable and uncountable, plural kanbans or kanban)

  1. (countable) A card containing a set of manufacturing specifications and requirements, used to regulate the supply of components.
    • The sub-assembly line assembles A. It goes to processing line 1 to withdraw part a, and for this purpose it must take the sub-assembly kanban (called withdrawal kanban). It goes to store a, withdraws boxes in the required quantity and removes those kanban (called in-process kanban or...1986, David J. Lu, transl., edited by Japan Management Association, Kanban Just-in Time at Toyota: Management Begins at the Workplace, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 93
  2. A coordinated manufacturing system using such cards.
    • However, since so many Japanese industries have adopted Kanban, this problem is diminishing.1994, Yasuhiro Monden, Toyota Production System: An Integrated Approach to Just-In-Time, Chapman & Hall, →ISBN, page 51
  3. (broadly) A system to manage, visualise, and improve work across teams, often as part of an agile methodology.
    • kanban board
    • The first thing that often differentiates a daily standup in a kanban team from other standup meetings is that a kanban team tends to focus on the work on the board rather than on the individual people in the team.2014, Joakim Sunden, Marcus Hammarberg, Kanban in Action, Manning, →ISBN

Noun (2) capitalized: Kanban

Kanban (countable and uncountable, plural Kanbans or Kanban)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of kanban.

Forms of kanban

pluralkanbans
pluralkanban
alternative formKanban
pluralKanbans
pluralKanban

Origin of kanban

From Japanese 看板 (かんばん, kanban), from 看 (kan, “visible”) + 板 (“board or card”), developed and first used in the Toyota Production System.

Words formed from kanban

Questions about kanban

What does kanban mean?
Kanban means a card containing a set of manufacturing specifications and requirements, used to regulate the supply of components.
What part of speech is kanban?
Kanban is a noun.
How do you pronounce kanban?
Kanban is pronounced /ˈkanban/.
What is the plural of kanban?
The plural of kanban is kanbans.

Words near kanban in the dictionary

  1. Kanawha County
  2. Kanayan
  3. Kanayans
  4. Kanazawa
  5. Kanbalu
  6. kanban
  7. kanbanize
  8. kanbanized
  9. kanbanizes
  10. kanbanizing
  11. kanbans

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kanban (page history and authors); Kanban (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-kanban.wav.

Cite this entry: “kanban.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kanban. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.