Hoshin Kanri provides a step-by-step planning, implementation, and review process for managed change. Specifically, it is a system approach to management of change in critical business processes. A system, in this sense, is a set of coordinated processes that accomplish the core objectives of the business.

For every business system there are measures of performance and desired levels of performance. Hoshin is a planning structure that will bring selected critical business processes up to the desired level of performance. Hoshin Kanri operates at two levels: First, at what Dr. Joseph Juran called “breakthrough” management or the strategic planning level; and, second, at the daily management level on the more routine or fundamental aspects of the business operation. Hoshin Kanri has been called the application of Deming’s plan-do-check-act to the management process.

The initial considerations in this approach to business system change as follows:

• Measuring the system as a whole
• Setting core objectives of the business.
• Understanding the environmental situation in which the business operates.
• Providing resources to perform business objectives.
• Defining processes that constitute the system – their activities, goals, and performance measures and performance.

Measuring the whole system

Critical to managing a system is creating a plan that manages the introduction of strategic change initiatives. This is essential because no one should expect to establish a “totally correct” initial direction for any business-system consideration. These business considerations include core business objectives, environmental conditions, resource availability for all critical business processes.

Hoshin Kanri encourages the ability to be adaptive. Since long range planning is based on information monitored from the business system, the planning process itself must be adaptive and capable of response to changes in the business system. This means that management of the business system must include a regular review or assessment that indicates whether or not the system plan is faltering and must be adjusted or changed. This is achieved through review both the planning implementation progress,  as well as application of the planning methodology itself. Thus, Hoshin becomes an enabling feature in the continuous improvement of the company’s management process, and serve as an information feedback loop that permits continuous responses to the winds of business change.