Books Beyond Strategic Vision, Effective Corporate Action With Hoshin Planning
Books and Publications Average Rating:

Rating: - Aligning lean principles with strategic intent
Time after time I have witnessed the application of lean or six sigma methodologies without a clear perception of how the specific initiatives align with the business strategy - often because the business strategy had never be developed to a stage where obvious connections could be made. Hoshin Kanri fills that gap by providing a means of devolving the high-level business strategies to the point where the individual tasks and projects to support them are identifiable - thereby creating the much need link between local initiatives and strategic imperatives.
The book "Beyond strategic vision" provides as good an explanation of the Hoshin Kanri method as any I have read. It explains in clear terms the process that is followed and supports the explanations with examples from the authors' experiences. The book provides of a number of example templates, and explains in detail many of the tools (an entire chapter focuses on the tools) that support the process. The great insight for me was that the tools used would probably be familiar to anybody that has experience with PDCA, Lean, TQM, Six sigma, etc., it is just that they are used in a strategic, rather than in their more typical tactical or operational, context.

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Rating: - Beyond Strategic Vision by Michael Cowley and Ellen Domb

The authors of Beyond Strategic Vision explain that planning at several levels is a common denominator for success in any effort to change an organisation. It concepts like total quality management and process re-engineering to be used successfully. The authors explain that strategic and operational planning are powerful agents and mechanisms for setting and meeting an organisation's ambitious and exciting goals. They explain that Hoshin planning is dramatically superior to any of the other systems. The Hoshin system was developed in Japan in the 1960s and is a derivative of management by objectives.

The authors presented a clear, logical and easy to follow description of the Hoshin planning process that can assist any organisation to plan, create and implement strategies successfully.

The book focuses on how to translate an organisation's vision into action. The book explains that the Hoshin planning process is a powerful tool for putting plans into action. It provides a framework for process driven thinking that results in organisational success. The authors used their experiences in some of the best organisations in the world to explain how Hoshin planning is applied.

I have worked in a number of organisations where the top management put a lot of time and effort into formulating strategic plans. The strategic plans largely failed to be implemented and were eventually not used at all.

The attraction of Hoshin planning is that it includes the implementation or the doing of what is planned as well as the review of what has been done. The planning processes that I had grown accustomed to separate the formulation of the plans from the implementation of them. The course explains that plans are best formulated by those responsible for their implementation.

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Rating: - Discover the secret of deploying company strategies
Beyond Strategic Vision is a great introduction to Hoshin Kanri -
the Japanese method for deploying goals and objectives throughout a company. The authors include basic tools for developing plans and walk through the use of basic forms and processes for making sure the company plan is consistently deployed throughout the firm.

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Rating: - Excellent hands on book about hoshin
Beyond Strategic Vision is a hands on book describing how youcan practically introduce hoshin planning. It describes the processfrom beginning to end. Prior to buying this book I had another hoshin book "Hoshin Kanri, Policy Deployment for successful TQM" but that one was much more abstract and theoretic. I would recommend a reader interested to learn about hoshin planning to buy Beyond Strategic Vision.