Hoshin Kanri was defined in 2000 by Professor Peter Hines and colleagues at Cardiff University, as a ‘strategic decision making tool that focuses resources on the critical initiatives necessary to accomplish the firm’s critical success factors. It also encompasses the cascading of this by ‘key business processes’ together with the control, measurement and feedback of results’.
(Reference: Hines, P., and Taylor, D. (2000). Going Lean. A Guide to Implementation. Lean Enterprise Research Centre, Cardiff).
Hoshin Kanri definition
There are many definitions on the web for Hoshin Kanri can also be identified as Strategy Deployment. Hoshin Kanri is basically a system that ensures the strategic goals of an organisation, drive improvement and action at all levels of that organisation. This results in eliminating waste that derives from sporadic direction and poor communication.
What Hoshin Kanri strives to do, is to ensure all employees at every level of the organisation are pulling in the same direction by aligning the ‘Strategy’ of the company with the the ‘Tactics’ and ‘Operations’ levels of the organisation. Everyone pulling in the same direction, together.
This short white paper set out to achieve two objectives:
- Consider the contingencies of each sector to understand the different, contingent factors that affected them
- Use Hoshin Kanri to develop and deploy contingent strategies for each sector. (Whilst other strategy development and deployment models were available – Hoshin Kanri was rarely used in empirical studies).
The author of this short paper is Dr Toni Whitehead who applied the this approach, as a model for the deployment of sector based strategies in her PhD research. Toni embedded lean supply chain strategic thinking into the regional economic development of priority business sectors in Wales, including Aerospace & Defence, Life Sciences and the Creative Industries. The outputs of the research informed the development of Welsh Government sector-specific strategies.
To see the full case study, use the download link provided.
