Kanban, by design, was a tool used in production control. It's one of the ways Toyota made their JIT production function.

I worked on the line (Toyoda Iron Works) and used a real-life Kanban implemented by the plant engineers. It was used for quality control, to broadcast quality control and station output, and was checked regularly against their internal estimates and baselines and used also as a gauge for employee output.

Control is what it's designed to do. The very fact that Kanban is the tool of choice should support at least some of OP's points, objectively.