La sfida per un Management creativo – Edito da Franco Angeli

In 1980’-90’, many Japanese leading manufacturers cancelled Hoshin Kanri because it could not make the positive impact on the financial statement any more. Hoshin Kanri in English is Policy Management. They did not stop managing their policies, of course. They stopped using Hoshin Kanri method to manage their companies.

Hoshi Kanri method was born in the era of mass production. To manage the company in the single united direction was the main issue at that time. However, as the small quantity with wide variety production became dominant, a lot of trade-offs arose. The small lot production made the production leveling for higher productivity more difficult. To meet the shorter required delivery lead-time by customers made the total cost higher.

As the result of Hoshin Kanri with the typical matrix chart, only limited people and departments were working toward the same direction. Most of the other people in the company were not practically involved. Although they started the new fiscal year with Hoshin charts, a lot of unexpected changes happened during the year. They needed to change their actions immediately during the year. However, the companies could not react to the rapid changes, and lost their money.

In 1982, JMA (Japan Management Association) hosted International Conference on Productivity & Quality Improvement (ICPQ) supported by METI; Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. TP Management (Total Productivity Management) was born for the strong demand for the overall productivity enhancement technique emerged in ICPQ. TP Management stands for;

Total:
  • Strategic deployment of all management resources
  • Clarify and centralize directions for all activities
Productivity:
  • Define “New Productivity”
  • Develop world class competitive product to satisfy customer
Management:
  • Deploy the established strategic target
  • Establish the creative management to fully utilize the corporate characteristics

In the changing environment, all people and departments need to react speedily to the uncertainties to solve the trade-offs in the companies with the companywide cross functional actions. TP Management quantitatively clarifies the trade-offs, and increases the business speed and the management effectiveness.