What is Hoshin Kanri?

Hoshin Kanri (sometimes called Policy Deployment) is an annual planning process that helps an organization set goals with measurable milestones and reconcile actual performance against those milestones.  A high-level goal (objective) is refined through the levels of management at an organization into strategies that ensure its achievement.  Each manager is assigned an objective (or more) and is responsible for creating strategies to achieve their objective. They must also define measurable milestones (metrics) for judging their progress.

Hoshin Planning is hierarchical: each manager's strategies become their direct-reports' objectives.  As the plan cascades down an organization in a series of discussions and planning sessions, implementation tables are created to define the detailed tasks necessary for achieving the primary objective.

Plans are reviewed quarterly.  Each objective or strategy is judged dispassionately against the metrics that were created at the beginning of the year.  This reconciliation process provides critical insight into where the organization needs to focus in order to achieve the strategic breakthroughs it needs.

PlanBase Hoshin Planning Sotware provides:

Alignment:  Focus your organization on achieving a shared strategic goal.  Everyone sees how their part of the plan relates to the whole.
Visibility:  Concise performance summaries at multiple levels allow senior teams to quickly identify critical areas.  Drill down into plans to discover root causes and corrective actions for keeping your plan on track.
Communication:  Share and build plans securely, in real time, with selected individuals from your organization or other organizations — anywhere in the world!
Engagement:  Assign ownership of strategies to tie individual success to the success of the plan.
Success:  Clients report that using PlanBase Hoshin empowers them to achieve their annual goals.

The Iowa Quality Center is the representative for the PlanBase process in Iowa and can provide your organization with training as well as act as a third party quality consultant and plan monitor.

Please contact us for more information or to evaluate PlanBase Hoshin for your organization.