The process:

“If you don’t know where you’re going, you might wind up someplace else” - Yogi Berra.
In other words, anyone who starts walking without direction has no idea where they will end up.

Do you know the situation in which top management starts setting goals in January, which become effective in February-March, employees set their personal goals in April (which often have no relation to management goals)?
With employee year end review starting in November and reflected into rewards and promotions in December.
Where employees have 7 months to achieve the goals on which they are assessed and where employee goals maybe contribute to the business goals.

This is exactly what a Hoshin Kanri process prevents . It ensures that the highest goals in a company are linked to the activities on all shop floors.
By making the higher goals the input for the next layer, where a translation is made to each working environment and corresponding goals are set.
With this process, the company goals are pursued to the max and no energy is wasted during the pursuit of those goals.

 Hoshin Kanri process

Catch ball process:

However, a good Hoshin Kanri process is not only top-down.
The first step towards the goals is, but during the implementation phase, during the various steps towards the shop floor, it is always checked whether the imposed goals are realistic and what the separate goals are for each work environment.

As soon as the translation has been made all the way to the shop floor, this is checked by the management in the Consultation phase and where a proposal for adjustment of the goals has been made, this is assessed.

Ultimately, the Management finalizes the goals and informs the entire organization about the final goals (company, department, team) and the associated metrics.

After this, each employee can set his personal goals, tailored to the departmental goals.