The results of the quality revolution have been mixed. Global competition has elevated the most successful companies, in terms of providing goods and services, but even then initiatives such as total quality, business process re-engineering and Six Sigma have been heralded as the solution, only to have been replaced with the next 'big thing' when it came along. Hoshin Kanri is not the next big thing in quality, it is a strategic approach to continuous improvement that provides a context for all of the individual elements such as Six Sigma or Lean Manufacturing. David Hutchins' Hoshin Kanri shows you how to develop a dynamic vision for continuous improvement; to implement effective policies to support it; to link key performance indicators to Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing and Kaizen and to sustain a strategy-led programme for improving business performance.

This book focuses on the implementation of Hoshin Kanri. It is a response to most books on strategic planning that tend to downplay the implementation and only describe the fully implemented planning process. The power of this book originates from a project in which a team of five professionals over a period of three years implemented Hoshin Kanri in 14 companies; results were drawn from 130 workshops with leadership teams. The project team subsequently ran several accelerators inside large and small companies as well as public institutions. All these experiences together form the implementation focus of the book. Moreover, the organization of the book mirrors the message of its scientific thinking, which is also the basic principle of Hoshin Kanri: Chapter 1 focuses on the basic analysis—Is Hoshin Kanri something for your organization? Chapter 2 addresses the ambition—What is the vision for strategy work in your organization? Chapter 3 presents the conditions needed for effective strategic work. Chapter 4 discusses the choice of implementation strategy and your role as the change agent. Chapter 5 describes how Hoshin Kanri works when implemented. Chapter 6 addresses coaching/mentoring and the Kata philosophy. Chapter 7 presents important analytical tools. Appendix 1 describes the journey made by a medium-sized construction company. Essentially, this book describes in a concrete and structured way how you—the change agent—can use Hoshin Kanri in your organization to tackle large and complex challenges.

The problem with most Hoshin Kanri books is that they describe a complex methodology that is overwhelming to most leaders and their organizations. The need to essentially change the culture of the entire organization to make Hoshin work isn‘t practical for most companies when first starting out.The Basics of Hoshin Kanri uses an easy-to-follow stor

Hoshin Kanri has been used successfully by Toyota and other top-tier companies in Japan and the United States to achieve strategic business and lean goals. The underlying power of a successful hoshin kanri process relays on how Toyota creates an environment of continuous improvement. Toyota is a strong business because of its people, and people are the value of its system. This book focuses more on people rather than the process. Management behavior, motivation, core organizational values and teamwork, leadership development, and culture change are the real factors of any business success. Akio Toyoda said after several recent recalls that the rate of the company’s growth was higher than the rate of the development of its people. Successful businesses need to invest in the people and put the people before the process. Read this book and you will see why a gap remains between successful and less successful companies in terms of process management, people management, and the adaptability of culture.

For Florida Power and Light, Hewlett-Packard, and Texas Instruments, policy deployment has created a critical bridge between corporate goals and their company-wide deployment. Hoshin Kanri offers top and middle managers a guide to customizing a policy deployment program especially suited to their company. This book is a compilation of examples of policy deployment and demonstrates how company vision is converted into individual responsibility. It contains practical guidelines, 150 charts and diagrams, and five case studies that illustrate the procedures of Hoshin Kanri. The six steps to advanced process planning are reviewed and include: a five-year vision; one-year plan; deployment to departments; execution; monthly audit; and annual audit. The practice of Hoshin Kanri will enable you to: Align all departmental and individual project goals to corporate goals and eliminate duplication of effort. Communicate to every employee his or her role in achieving the company vision. Closely monitor performance using carefully devised measures of progress. Learn how Hoshin Kanri can increase your company's responsiveness to social, economic, and technical changes through flexible strategic management. (Originally published by the Japanese Standards Association)

Winner of a Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award! At the heart of Lean and Six Sigma is the same, unique business operating system: hoshin kanri. It is a method of strategic planning and a tool for managing complex projects, a quality operating system geared to ensuring that organizations faithfully translate the voice of the customer into new products, and a business operating system that ensures reliable profit growth. The true power of hoshin kanri, however, is two-fold -- it is a superior organizational learning method as well as a competitive resource development system. Hoshin Kanri for the Lean Enterprise, by Tom Jackson, explains how you can implement, identify and manage the critical relationships among your markets, design characteristics, production systems, and personnel to satisfy your customers and beat your competition. This practical workbook provides— A new understanding of hoshin kanri as a grand experimental design implemented through a system of team agreements. Clear explanations of the steps of hoshin kanri. A measure of overall business effectiveness used to determine the focus of corporate strategy. A new, improved X-matrix that incorporates a lean "balanced scorecard" for identifying improvement opportunities and converting them readily into bottom line results as a value stream P&L in terms that financial managers and accountants can understand and support. A CD containing forms, meeting agendas, and examples of X-matrices that serve marketing and design engineering as well as manufacturing. This workbook will show you the mechanics of implementing hoshin kanri, so that you can systematically improve your brand equity, implement Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma, and integrate your suppliers into a Lean and Six Sigma organization.

With the renewed emphasis on Strategic Planning effectiveness, the need is greater than ever before for a strategic planning, deployment and audit system that can help to successfully lead an organization into a competitive future. The Hoshin Kanri methodology offers a means to focus an organization on what is critical for its future and to deploy those goals in such a way that the organization is aligned both vertically and horizontally in its effort to achieve success. In addition, the Hoshin Kanri system provides the visibility to track progress of the strategic plan strategies and projects so that the leadership of the organization is able to respond to unexpected challenges and roadblocks as they arise. Hoshin Kanri is the key to driving Lean and Six Sigma initiatives across the organization.