Article in Journal ART-2025-01

BibliographySchreier, Ulf; Reimann, Peter; Mitschang, Bernhard: A Kanban-based Approach to Manage Machine Learning Projects in Manufacturing.
In: Procedia CIRP: Proceedings of the 58th CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems (CIRP CMS). Vol. 134.
University of Stuttgart, Faculty of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Information Technology.
pp. 109-114, english.
Elsevier, April 2025.
DOI: 10.1016/j.procir.2025.03.011.
Article in Journal.
CR-SchemaH.2.8 (Database Applications)
KeywordsMachine learning (ML); ML project management, machine learning operations (MLOps); Kanban; Scrum
Abstract

A growing number of machine learning (ML) projects in manufacturing require the collaboration of various experts. In addition to data scientists, stakeholders with production engineering knowledge have to specify and prioritize individual project tasks. Data engineers prepare input data, while machine learning operations (MLOps) engineers ensure that trained models are deployed and monitored within IT landscapes. Existing project management approaches, e.g., Scrum, have problems for ML projects, as they do not consider various expert roles or ML project stages. We propose a project management approach defining a Kanban workflow by readjusting stages of ML development lifecycles, e.g., CRISP DM. This makes it possible to map expert roles to stages of the Kanban workflow. An adapted Kanban board allows visualizing and reviewing the status of all project tasks. We validate our approach with specific use cases, showing that it facilitates ML project management in manufacturing.

Department(s)University of Stuttgart, Institute of Parallel and Distributed Systems, Applications of Parallel and Distributed Systems
Project(s)GSaME-NFG
Entry dateOctober 10, 2025
   Publ. Department   Publ. Institute   Publ. Computer Science