Hoshin Kanri – Breakthrough

Hoshin Kanri also known as Strategy deployment helps business leaders identify and focus on strategic objectives that will drive Breakthrough performance, also establishes a disciplined process for achieving those objectives.

Hoshin Kanri has four components

Ho – means Direction. Shin – refers to Focus.

Kan – refers to Alignment. Ri – means Reason.

Hoshin means Setting Direction or deciding what to achieve and Kanri means putting up a management system to achieve the set direction.  Hoshin Kanri can be linked to a leading star or True north of a compass. Best way to understand Hoshin Kanri is the way iron filings go into alignment on a piece of paper if the pole of a magnet is placed underneath. Each small iron filing could be considered to be just one employee with everyone focused towards the Vision and Aims of the organisation.

Hoshin Kanri technique was developed in Japan in 1960 and grew out of the realization on the part of Japanese managers that they needed a more robust and effective form of planning to achieve major improvements and strategic changes of direction in their organizations, and that the quality improvement tools and methods in use at that time were inadequate for this purpose. They used MBO (Management by Objectives) as a point of departure and added their own contributions in the area of participative management practices. Hoshin Kanri  was originally intended to focus only on the very few breakthrough objectives that are regarded by the organization as most important to its future success or survival. However, its methodology can be used to do all of the organization’s planning when an organization has become very skilled in its use.

The basic premise of Hoshin is that the organization will identify an area or two each year for special focus and will seek a major improvement in it. The focus and alignment of the organization on this objective will assure that significant progress will get made (that is, a “Breakthrough”).  However, the business of the organization must run on a day-to-day basis, which we refer to as Daily work Management.

Key benefits of Hoshin Kanri are:

• It is “Vision-Driven,” in that it derives the organization’s objectives from its Strategic Intent, or Vision.
• It provides a framework and methodology for the development of “breakthroughs” on a select few of the most important objectives.
• It aligns and focuses the organization on these most important objectives and facilitates development of the most effective means of achieving them.
• It provides a rigorously structured implementation system that is, at the same time, very flexible.
• It provides a review system that is intimately linked to implementation. The review system provides timely corrective actions, an effective assessment of progress, and a method of capturing organizational learning about both the plan content and the planning process itself, so both can be systematically improved.

Hoshin Kanri, a powerful tool, helps eliminate all barriers to achievement of organisational goals. It is a structured strategic planning process, aims at aligning strategies with day-to-day efforts & employee performance, to achieve the company objectives.  Plan, Align & Execute Goals and Strategies at every level of your organisation through powerful tool of Hoshin Kanri. Our expertise in Hoshin Kanri can help you achieve greater results through right strategies & its implementation.

RIB Consulting experts can work with your leadership team to:

RIB Consulting also helps you establish appropriate 3 to 5 year long term business objectives, translate those to annual objectives with concrete actions and targets in the form of X-Matrix. Hoshin Kanri X-Matrix joins four quadrants and visually connects annual Breakthrough objectives, guidelines to achieve the objectives, divisional improvement objectives with concrete actions with targets.

To know more about how RIB Consulting can help you in implementing policy deployment, contact us on contact@ribcon.com.