Hoshin kanri involves the identification and deployment of various initiatives (or countermeasures) to eliminate major obstacles to reach the organization’s goal and to further improve the organization’s performance. Typically, organizations subsequently track their performance to see whether they are actually improving. In hoshin kanri these performance indicators are called “control items”. But what organizations track less is whether they are actually deploying what they set out to deploy. These so called “check items” are often missing. And exactly this is one of the key aspects in which hoshin kanri differs from traditional management-by-objectives or MBO. (more…)
