Master Lean Kanban Certification Interview Questions: Elevate Your Career with Expertise

Lean Kanban methodology seeks to enhance teamwork, project efficiency, and the continuous flow of product delivery. It focuses on using Kanban visualization approaches to provide a direct and clear path to project workflow. It is simple to use and has a big influence on productivity. Professionals with a Lean Kanban Certification have a thorough understanding of both Kanban and Lean principles. This facilitates their use within the organization to decrease system waste, track lead and cycle times, and value stream map.

Organizations hire professionals with Lean Kanban Certification to enhance their quality management system. Therefore, having a Lean Kanban Certification keeps candidates in demand and expands their career opportunities. Professionals can utilize our well-crafted interview questions and Lean Kanban interview answers while seeking a job as a Lean Kanban professional. These interview questions and answers will make it easier for professionals to ace their interviews.


Kanban principles help certified Lean Kanban professionals to maximize their business processes. Kanban works on the following principles:
  • Visualize the workflow
  • Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
  • Manage flow
  • Continuous improvement

Power-ups allow Lean Kanban professionals to customize their Kanban board as per their needs. The different types of Power-Ups in Kanban are as follows:
  • Calendar widget
  • Interactive checklists
  • Card aging
  • Recurring tasks
  • Board background
  • Team activity widget
  • Add task box
  • Task navigator

5S stands for sort, place in order, shine, standardize, and sustain. This techniques is intended to reduce waste while maximizing productivity by keeping the workplace organized and using visual signals to achieve more consistent operational results. Lean Kanban Certification holders can expand on this response by outlining one or two 5s methods.

Organizations can achieve Lean Manufacturing by eliminating waste. Lean manufacturing emphasizes increasing productivity while concurrently reducing waste in production operations. Business operations may become more efficient, effective, and competitive in any market with the aid of lean manufacturing.

The document known as a "bill of materials" contains a list of the parts or materials required to make a component or product. It is a recipe that could include details on the cost, supplier, material used in manufacturing processes, or physical properties of the ingredients or components. Bill of materials is mostly used in manufacturing operations to establish a regular production formula or schedule as well as to budget unit cost for accounting needs.

The different types of waste in the lean manufacturing process include:
  • Unnecessary transportation
  • Excess inventory
  • Unnecessary motion of people, equipment or machinery
  • Waiting, or idle equipment
  • Over-production of a product
  • Over-processing
  • Defects

A system called Andon is used in lean manufacturing to swiftly notify management and operators of problems for taking prompt action. In the event that a production issue emerges, it enables improved communication and information exchange between manufacturing operators, team leaders, and external technicians.

Lean Kanban professionals a set of lean manufacturing tools to apply lean principles to your manufacturing process. These include value stream mapping, 5S, kanban boards, Poka-Yoke, total productive maintenance, rank order clustering, single-point scheduling, redesigning working cells, multi-process handling, and control charts.

Kanban and Scrum are project management approaches that prioritize continuous improvement while emphasizing minimal task completion intervals. However, the techniques they employ to accomplish those ends vary. Kanban is all about visualizing your work, controlling the amount of work that is still in progress, and increasing productivity. Scrum, on the other hand, is an iterative, incremental work approach that offers a highly prescriptive manner to complete work.

Cumulative flow diagram is one of the most sophisticated Kanban analytics visualizations. It helps professionals pursuing Lean Kanban Certification realize how steady the flow is and where they should concentrate to make the procedure more predictable. In addition, it allows experts to view vast volumes of data and provides quantitative and qualitative insight into past and present issues.

  • Cumulative Flow Diagram
  • Cycle time
  • Aging WIP Chart
  • Blocker Clustering Chart
  • Flow Efficiency
  • Kanban Timeline.

The first category of Muda is non-value-adding tasks that must be completed. An example of type 1 Muda is Safety tests and inspections. They are necessary but do not directly improve the product. The second category of Muda is non-value-adding activities that don't affect the final product or the reliability of the process that produces it. It is the type of waste that must be removed.

Kanban enables an organization to cut expenses and develops a workplace that can adapt fast to changes. The team is able to perform to its fullest extent since it makes the techniques for establishing and ensuring quality control easier. Furthermore, due to their quicker cycle times, they can supply features more quickly. Kanban eliminates the activities that the team or organization finds least important or non-important.

A time tracker gives Lean Kanban Certified professionals a thorough account of the work completed at that exact time. It is helpful in Time reporting by project, user, or task; reports in detail on the tasks completed; Easy time monitoring and manageable time entries.

Production leveling, also known as production smoothing, is the process by which businesses meet consumer needs while minimizing manufacturing wastes, such as capital expenses, labor costs, and lead times for production.

Muda, mura, and muri are three types of wasteful actions that negatively impact workflow, productivity, and ultimately, customer satisfaction.
  • Muda means wastefulness
  • Mura means irregularity or a lack of uniformity
  • Muri means overworked

The Lean Manufacturing Execution System (MES) connects the management team with the operations on the factory floor. It is a system that coordinates and controls manufacturing floor production to shorten the total amount of time it takes to execute an order. It offers real-time data to better efficiently manage industrial operations.

Yes, Kanban enables anyone to control a problem and solve it. Any team member should be able to take action with the transparency Kanban offers and be able to support it with solid evidence. This supportive environment encourages team members to take the initiative, calculated risks, and advance both personally and professionally.

SMED or Single-Minute Exchange of Die is a technology for drastically lowering the time it takes to execute equipment changes. This promotes workers to finish as many tasks as they can before the transition, to have teams work concurrently, and to establish a standardized and efficient workflow.

The major issue in manufacturing is improving forecasting demand for products, controlling inventory, improving efficiency at manufacturing plants, increasing ROI, skilled labor shortage, managing sales leads, and coping with technological advances.

Little’s law is a fundamental concept in queuing theory and the study of operations research. It is used in Kanban to foresee cycle times, make data-driven decisions to optimize the work process and comprehend and enhance workflow.

The formula of Little’s Law is L = λ W
  • L represents the number of work items in the system.
  • λ represents the arrival rate of work items into or out of the system.
  • W represents the average time a work item spends in the system.

The five Lean principles are considered as a guide for improving workplace efficiency. It includes defining value, mapping the value stream, creating flow, using a pull system, and pursuing perfection.

Anywhere with an internet connection may view an online kanban board. It facilitates easy collaboration while resolving bottleneck issues. It is no longer necessary for team members to browse through emails, documents, or physical boards since they can view task specifics, project progress, and historical data all in one location.

Little’s law is expressed in an alternative way in Kanban as WIP = Throughput * Cycle Time.
  • WIP - the current number of items actively being worked on in the system.
  • Throughput - the rate at which items are completed and left the system.
  • Cycle Time - the time it takes for a single item to move from start to finish.

Kanban feedback loops are techniques or strategies to promote ongoing process and operational improvement. It aids organizations to become more agile, increase the manufacturing process, and become flexible.

The seven Kanban cadences are Standup Meeting, Replenishment Meeting, Service Delivery Review, Risk Review, Delivery Planning Meeting, Operations Review, and Strategy Review.

Daily Meeting/ Daily Kanban is a 15-minute meeting that allows teams to discuss the status of work, identify potential issues, and plan the day's activities. It focuses on tasks and activities to be done within the day. Furthermore, it ensures that work proceeds without hiccups and that everyone is informed of any obstacles.

The purpose of the operations review meeting is to examine how the organization's departments, divisions, and teams are working together. It analyzes the organization's entire processes. an operations review is conducted every month to identify problems early and prevent them from harming the business.

Strategy Review is conducted for the longest in duration among all the Kanban cadences. It is conducted for 4 to 5 hours. Strategy Review makes sure the team is heading in the right direction based on the company's strategic goals and changing market conditions. Further, it ensures that the team's output aligns with the overall business strategy.

The three main functions of the Kanban cadences are getting things done, doing the right things, and Doing things better. These functions help in managing work effectively, improving processes, and ensuring alignment with strategic goals.

The elements of a kanban board are Visual Signals, Columns, Work In Progress (WIP) Limits, Commitment points, and Delivery points.

A service-level agreement (SLA) is a contract between a service provider and its customers. It outlines the requirements for quality and service level that a provider of services must adhere to when providing services to a client or customer. SLA ensures both sides have the same understanding of requirements.

The three types of SLAs are customer service-level agreements (agreements between an organization and a third-party vendor), internal service-level agreements (agreements between teams within an organization), and multilevel service-level agreements (agreements between multiple parties).

Risk Review helps the team to identify any issues, such as backlogs and existing or potential bottlenecks that could render it difficult for the team to achieve deadlines and produce high-quality work. It also helps the team proactively manage and mitigate risks.

A physical Kanban board consists of a whiteboard and sticky notes. It represents jobs in different phases of to do, doing, or done using objects like colored pushpins and magnets. Team members may visualize and optimize workflow with the help of a Kanban Board. A physical Kanban board is a useful tool for individuals or small team.

STATIK stands for Systems Thinking Approach to Implementing Kanban. It makes it possible for the team to comprehend how the system functions overall. It concentrates on examining the whole interconnected service system so that your team may implement improvements.

The steps in the STATIK process are to understand the purpose of the system, understand sources of dissatisfaction, analyze the source and nature of demand, analyze delivery capability, model the workflow, identify and define classes of service, and design the Kanban system.

Emergency Kanban addresses an unforeseen circumstance that requires immediate attention. This is a set Kanban used to indicate a rapid change in the quantity of the product that has to be produced or to replace damaged parts. Emergency Kanban is used in situations where immediate action is required.

Production Kanban, Withdrawal Kanban, Supplier Kanban,Emergency Kanban, Express Kanban, Through Kanban, Basic Kanban, Personal Kanban, Team Kanban, and Service Kanban. These Kanban helps in increase workflow, reducing waste, and enhancing efficiency.