The requirements

Worthington Industries was already going through a broader transformation programme.  It was in the process of implementing Lean and visual management practices across the business.

For IT and Project Management, that meant moving from work being tracked across spreadsheets, tickets, and individual managers’ heads into a shared visual system where:

• Everyone could see all the work in flight, in real time
• Accountability for getting things done was visible, not implicit
• The IT group could run sprints (Scrum) at the team level while still showing the wider portfolio of jobs and workflows. 

The team evaluated three other platforms in the process: Kanban Flow, Target Process, and Smart Sheets.

Result 

Worthington selected SwiftKanban over the three alternatives. The choice was driven by what the team needed the platform to actually do once installed:

• Real-time visibility across all activities — not just team-level boards but a shared view across IT and Project Management work
• Built-in accountability — boards and cards making ownership obvious without requiring extra status meetings
• Coexistence with Scrum — IT was already running Sprints; SwiftKanban needed to complement that, not replace it

The outcome

Two outcomes Worthington tracks today:

• Visibility to jobs and workflows — for everyone, in real time
• Increased accountability for getting things done — work ownership is visible, status questions go away

Why this matters for manufacturers running Lean transformations

Lean transformations almost always run into the same wall: the principles are right, but the visual management has to be real — visible to everyone, updated in real time, used by the people doing the work.

Most teams try to do this with spreadsheets or tickets first; both eventually fail. The Worthington story is about getting that visual management layer right inside a broader Lean programme.

Download the case study to know how did Worthington arrive at SwiftKanban as it’s tool of choice.