What is Hoshin Kanri?

Before starting on hosin kanri let me tell you something. I am sure most of you have an eye on Toyota right now. Father of lean manufacturing is in trouble. Last week’s article on Toyota crisis and its relationship to lean has bought lots of responses. Most of the readers have emailed me their thoughts. I learnt through them, most of you do not blame lean for the problems Toyota have in their hands right now. If you haven’t read it already read the article by clicking the link above. Please leave your comments at the end of the article for the entire world will be able to see it.

Now back to the topic. Every organization exists for a reason. One of the main reasons is to earn profits. There can be other reasons for existence as well. On the other hand every organization has their resources like capital, organizational structures, processes, and people. You may be a follower of lean or not, but I am sure you will agree with me, it is very difficult to align all your resources to achieve what you want to achieve, especially when your organization is larger. If you are working with only handful amount of people it is mighty easy to achieve your goals. You can see each other working. You have a direct control. But when your organization is large, you will have different clusters, departments and divisions etc, etc. there will be hundreds or even thousands of people who are working for you to achieve your goals. Everyone needs to be pulling in same direction in order for you to achieve your goals effectively. But I am sure you would know, it is not easy as it sounds.

Only very few people in an organization would be aware of the goals of the organization. Even if they know it only a handful would know how your organization is going to achieve them, or your strategies. Even if they know how they are going to be achieved, most of you will not know what is the part you will have to play in order to achieve your organization goals. Sounds familiar isn’t it. Best part is, even if you know what you want to achieve, you wouldn’t know how you, yourself and others are going to measure it.

So every organization has to answer few questions when they set up their goals and cascade them down the chain.

1. What is our goal? For an example “we want to be the #1 car manufacturer in the world”

2. How are we going to achieve our goal? For an example “we want to sell x million units of cars to become the #1 car manufacturer of the world”

3. What do we want to achieve the target? For an example “We are going to manufacturer the world’s lowest cost car so that everyone can afford it”

4. How are we going to measure whether we achieved our objective? For an example “Have sold y number of cars in this year as per our plan”

There may be several answers for the questions above depending on the goal you may set. But I guess you get the idea.

As you can see, setting the goals and cascading them down one step is hard enough. How about cascading your goals to thousands of employees. It will not be easy. But this is where Hoshin Kanri comes to play.

Hoshin Kanri is a very important tool used in lean environment. It is known as a good policy deployment tool. It basically systemizes the process of passing information level by level so that all the components of your organization would be completely aligned to the overall goals of your organization.

Every department will have their objective set by the Hoshin plan for their organization. Every sub divisions of the department will have their objectives set based on the goals their departments need to achieve. It will cascade down to the employee, and will clearly tell your employee what he or she has to do in order to achieve the goals of your organization. Isn’t this cool?

Again it needs to be said however, this process is not easy either. It requires mindset changes, thorough follow up and dedication. No one is 100% in this regard. But there is no need to be 100% in your hoshin efforts to realize its benefits. You may realize it on the go.

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