iObeya digitizes the Obeya - the Lean war room where strategy, metrics and problems go up on the wall - so multisite and hybrid teams can run it in real time.
In Lean management there is a room. The Japanese call it the Obeya - literally "big room" - and it is where a team's plan for the quarter, its live numbers and its open problems are pinned to the walls so everyone sees the same picture at the same time. Toyota made it famous. Airbus, Thales and Sanofi still run their operations this way. The trouble with a room is that it has walls, and walls do not travel between sites or scale to 33,500 employees.
iObeya, founded in Massy, France in 2011 by Cyril Daloz and Julien Revel, sells the fix: software that recreates the Obeya as connected digital boards. The company describes its product as a "Digital Obeya Platform for Operational Excellence." In plain terms, it is the sticky notes, the hand-drawn charts and the red-and-green KPI grids of a physical war room - rebuilt so a plant in France and an engineering team in Seattle look at, and update, the same wall.
The origin was not a whiteboard demo. In 2012, PSA Groupe - now part of Stellantis - asked for a way to digitize its product-development "large rooms." That request shaped the product, and it explains why iObeya has always felt more like industrial infrastructure than a consumer app. By the company's own reporting, the platform now sees more than 750,000 daily users.
"More than a room, the Obeya is a way of working."
iObeya's virtual Obeya rooms mirror how an organization is structured. Inside, teams run the rituals Lean and Agile depend on - daily stand-ups, Kaizen problem-solving, Kanban flow, SQCDP quality boards, Hoshin Kanri strategy deployment and Scaled Agile (SAFe) ceremonies - on a paper-like canvas built for those exact practices.
Because the interface deliberately looks like paper, factory and engineering teams adopt it without a retraining program. Live data from Jira, Azure DevOps, SAP, Power BI and Microsoft 365 flows onto the boards, and the Obeya Control Tower rolls KPIs up for leadership.
Distributed organizations struggle to keep leadership strategy and frontline execution aligned. Information lives in slides, spreadsheets and physical rooms that only one site can see. When a metric slips, the people who could act often find out late.
iObeya's bet is that visibility drives action: when a KPI turns red on a shared board, the right people respond faster. Stellantis reported cutting meeting time by about 50%; Sanofi has cited roughly EUR 4.5M in problem-solving gains.
A secure enterprise platform of virtual Obeya rooms that mirror your org structure, connecting strategy to execution across sites.
Customizable rooms with a paper-like canvas for Lean rituals, Agile ceremonies, Kaizen, Kanban, SQCDP and SAFe practices.
Live KPI dashboards that aggregate data across boards for data-driven decision-making and performance governance.
Connectors to Jira, Azure DevOps, Microsoft 365 & Teams, SAP and Power BI keep boards live and synchronized.
Relative emphasis based on named customers and public use cases - approximate, illustrative.
Figures reported by iObeya and press coverage; bar lengths are illustrative, not to a single scale.
General-purpose whiteboards such as Miro and Mural hand you an open canvas and let you draw anything. iObeya starts from the opposite end. It is built around specific Lean and Agile methods - Hoshin Kanri, SQCDP, Kanban, SAFe - with structured templates, live enterprise data and the compliance credentials that regulated industries require.
That focus is also the moat. iObeya carries ISO 27001 certification, which is often a prerequisite for aerospace, defense and pharmaceutical buyers. And it speaks the language of a plant manager, not a design team. For customers whose competitive edge is operational excellence, a tool that already understands their rituals is worth more than a blank page.
iObeya is deployed by large industrial and regulated organizations - the kind that run on Lean discipline and cannot afford a red KPI to go unseen.
iObeya is B2B SaaS, sold to large enterprises on a per-seat subscription with enterprise deployment, ISO 27001 security and integration services. The classic motion is land-and-expand: start in one plant or business unit, then spread across sites as more teams put their Obeya on the platform.
It sits at the intersection of visual collaboration and Lean/Agile operations - broader than a Kanban tool, more specialized than a general whiteboard. As remote and hybrid work made physical war rooms impractical, iObeya's category - digital visual management - moved from nice-to-have to infrastructure.
Cyril Daloz and Julien Revel start the company in Massy, France to digitize visual management.
PSA Groupe (now Stellantis) asks to digitize its product-development "large rooms," shaping the product.
Raises roughly $2.29M to grow the platform, backed by Fortino Capital Partners.
Raises $17M led by Red River West, with Atlantic Bridge and Fortino, and opens a Seattle office.
Expands virtual Obeyas and launches the Obeya Control Tower for live KPI governance.
"The visual power of paper at the speed of digital."
The term comes from Japanese Lean practice, popularized by Toyota's product development. iObeya = "internet Obeya."
PSA Groupe (now Stellantis) effectively co-created the use case by asking to digitize its development war rooms.
The boards look like sticky notes and hand-drawn charts so shop-floor teams adopt them with no retraining.
Its US expansion targeted aerospace and manufacturing country rather than the usual startup hub.
iObeya makes a Digital Obeya Platform - software that recreates the Lean "big room" of visual boards, sticky notes and KPIs online, so multisite and hybrid teams manage strategy and operations together in real time.
"Obeya" is Japanese for "big room." In Lean management it's a space where a team's plans, metrics and problems are made visible on the walls so everyone can align and act. iObeya digitizes that concept.
Large industrial and regulated organizations - including Airbus, Thales, Sanofi, Schneider Electric and Stellantis - with a reported 750,000+ daily users across manufacturing, aerospace, pharma, logistics and financial services.
General whiteboards are open canvases. iObeya is purpose-built for Lean and Agile practices - Hoshin Kanri, SQCDP, Kanban, SAFe - with structured templates, enterprise integrations and ISO 27001 security aimed at regulated industries.
iObeya raised roughly $2.29M in seed funding in 2017 and a $17M Series A in 2020 led by Red River West, with participation from Atlantic Bridge Capital and Fortino Capital Partners.