For any successful change management, it is required to plan a strategy. Productivity Solutions offers Competitive Strategic Planning for businesses embarking on a Lean journey. This is delivered through the following:

1. Assessment and Benchmarking
2. Value Stream Mapping
3. Balanced Scorecard Approach
4. Hoshin Kanri or Policy Deployment

We shall discuss the Balanced Scorecard approach and Hoshin Kanri in this section. Please click on the above links for Benchmarking and Value Stream Mapping.

Balance Scorecard Approach
The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that is used worldwide to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organisation, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organisation performance against strategic goals. It was originated by Dr. Robert Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and Dr. David Norton as a performance measurement framework that added strategic non-financial performance measures to traditional financial metrics to give managers and executives a more 'balanced' view of organisational performance.

The balanced scorecard transforms an organization’s strategic plan from an attractive but passive document into the "marching orders" for the organisation on a daily basis. It provides a framework that not only provides performance measurements, but helps planners identify what should be done and measured. It enables executives to truly execute their strategies.

The balanced scorecard approach provides a clear prescription as to what companies should measure in order to 'balance' the financial perspective. The balanced scorecard is a management system (not only a measurement system) that enables organisations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action. It provides feedback around both the internal business processes and external outcomes in order to continuously improve strategic performance and results. When fully deployed, the balanced scorecard transforms strategic planning from an academic exercise into the nerve centre of an enterprise.

Perspectives
The balanced scorecard suggests that we view the organization from four perspectives, and to develop metrics, collect data and analyze it relative to each of these perspectives:

The Learning & Growth Perspective
This perspective includes employee training and corporate cultural attitudes related to both individual and corporate self-improvement.

The Business Process Perspective
This perspective refers to internal business processes. Metrics based on this perspective allow the managers to know how well their business is running, and whether its products and services conform to customer requirements (the mission).

The Customer Perspective
Recent management philosophy has shown an increasing realization of the importance of customer focus and customer satisfaction in any business.

The Financial Perspective
Timely and accurate funding data will always be a priority, and managers will do whatever necessary to provide it. In fact, often there is more than enough handling and processing of financial data. There is perhaps a need to include additional financial-related data, such as risk assessment and cost-benefit data, in this category.
Adapted from The Balanced Scorecard by Kaplan & Norton

Hoshin Kanri
Hoshin Kanri is a systems approach to the management of change in critical business processes using a step-by-step planning, implementation, and review process. Hoshin Kanri improves the performance of business systems. A business system 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 Kanri provides a planning structure that will bring selected critical business processes up to the desired level of performance.

The term Hoshin is short for Hoshin Kanri. The word Hoshin can be broken into two parts. The literal translation of “ho” is direction. The literal translation of “shin” is needle, so the word “Hoshin” could translate into direction needle or the English equivalent of compass. The word Kanri can also be broken into two parts. The first part, “kan”, translates into control or channelling. The second part, “ri”, translates into reason or logic. Taken altogether, Hoshin Kanri means management and control of the organization's direction needle or focus. A simpler translation of Hoshin is policy deployment.