VIDEO - The director of a hotel in the Canary Islands explains the organization's hoshin efforts and shows us the lean visual management boards she uses to track progress and highlight problems.

Words: Amalia Vidal Vásquez, Hotel Director, Dreamplace Hotels & Resort - Tenerife, Spain

When we first started using hoshinkanri, our coaches from the Instituto Lean Management told us that all the indicators we would ever need can be found on strategy deployment board, and that we would be able to use it to control everything going on in the hotel. Needless to say, I didn't believe them.

Little did I know that one year down the line we'd see the impact of this visual approach so clearly. Our way to assess our progress, tackle problems and, more in general, do things has changed so much! Critically, hoshin kanri has allowed us to bring together the improvements coming from the front line (you should see how many A3s we produce) with the business-wide strategic problems we need to solve if we are to stay successful.

Some parts of the hoshin have come more natural to us than others. For instance, we particularly struggled with the idea of "delivery", something that is hard to interpret in an environment like a hotel (where the delivery happens in the real time, in front of the customer). But we have stuck to it, and the results are starting to show.

Check out the video below (if you can't see subtitles, make sure you press the CC button) to learn more about our hoshin. In a few weeks' time, we will share another video showing you our daily management system and explaining how it interacts with our hoshin board.