Winner of the 2007 Shingo Prize for Research
How do you lead and manage a large workforce of people who at any moment may stop an unnecessary MRI or a wrong-side surgery in the operating room? Hoshin kanri is the answer. The lean health care organization is a different kind of animal that requires a new approach to leadership and management control. The method of hoshin kanri embodies both.
Hoshin Kanri for the Lean Enterprise, by Moss Adams Lean Health Care Practice Managing Director Thomas L. Jackson, is a practical guide to implementing hoshin kanri to improve performance in the modern business organization. As the title indicates, the book focuses on hoshin kanri, known variously as policy deployment, strategy management, and the “balanced scorecard.” Hoshin is the master control methodology, geared perfectly to the management of the radically decentralized decision-making that characterizes lean companies such as Toyota and Canon and leading health care organizations such as the Virginia Mason Medical Center and Park Nicollet Health Services.
The method works because it ensures that all managers know precisely what the company expects of them, and managers confirm their understanding by articulating exactly how they intend to support the company’s strategic goals. This commitment is crystalized in the form of a contract, called an A3.
Hoshin Kanri for the Lean Enterprise explains how to use the A3 format to document a system of commitments that aligns organizational energies around a “hoshin” or small set of significant strategic targets. The outline of the book follows the hoshin process, which is based upon the Deming cycle of Plan Do Check Act (PDCA). The book incorporates the use of value stream maps and lean accounting and includes a chapter on the often-neglected topic of the president’s diagnosis. Finally, the book explains how hoshin is related to the core lean technique of standard work.
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