Kanban in Biotech: An Enterprise Kanban Case Study
What is the most important cell in the human body? The CEO asked the senior managers this question on the company's first day with Kanban.
This is the story of a biopharmaceutical company founded in the early 2000s and headquartered in St. Petersburg, Russia. Being much smaller than the Big Pharma companies, it found its edge in oncology, hematology, treatment of autoimmune diseases and its world-class clinical research program. Still growing and with hundreds of employees in many locations and over 20 research labs, this is a very complex organization. Seeking new improvement ideas, the company turned to the Kanban method.
Even though this Kanban journey is a very recent development, it has already produced many great stories worth sharing. Some of them are humorous. The very first Kanban board actually fell from the wall, overburdened with Post-Its. Many others are deeper stories demonstrating Kanban application with organizational impact. They have a common theme: people across the company getting better at managing the unpredictable flow of intellectual work, essential to success in their complex business.
The answer to the question about the most important cell turned out to be a powerful lesson in modern management We'll save it until the end.
Featuring: A special biotechnology version of the GetKanban game
Presenters:• Evgenia Ovchinnikova
• Alexei Zheglov, KCP, AAKT, Principal Consultant, Lean A-to-Z
