Kanban Was Born in Japan, Yet Japanese Offices Still Swear by Excel

Toyota engineer Taiichi Ohno developed the Kanban system in the late 1940s and 1950s, drawing inspiration from American supermarket restocking methods to create a visual, pull-based workflow that minimised waste on factory floors. The concept was later adopted by the global tech industry and became a cornerstone of modern agile project management. Despite this Japanese origin, many traditional Japanese workplaces continue to rely heavily on Microsoft Excel for nearly all organisational tasks, from scheduling to project tracking. Excel's unstructured, rules-free flexibility makes it a deeply entrenched cultural tool that resists replacement by more opinionated systems like Kanban boards. A firsthand account from an English school in Japan illustrates this tension, where a sprawling, overloaded Excel file managed all student and staff data until the system began to struggle under its own weight.