A3 Management

A3 Management

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At recent moment, I always found the term of A3 management in lean. I have no idea what is that once I heard that term, so I was searching the related information for further study. Finally, I found something but it is not so special for me but only its "name".

The term “A3” refers to an international-size piece of paper, one that is approximately 11-by-17 inches. Toyota’s insight many years ago was that every issue an organization faces can and should be captured on a single sheet of paper. This enables everyone touching the issue to see through the same lens. While the basic thinking for an A3 follows a common logic, the precise format and wording are flexible, and most organizations tweak the design to fit their unique requirements. The A3 is like a resume that can be adapted in layout, style and emphasis according to the person seeking the job and the type of job being sought. Practitioners can adapt the format to fit the requirements of each situation.

Let us see what are the items should be included in A3 form,

1. Title: Names problem, theme or issue;

2. Owner/Date: Identifies who “owns” the problem or issue and the date of the latest revision;

3. Background: Establishes the business context and importance of the issue;

4. Current Conditions: Describes what is currently known about the problem or issue;

5. Goals/Targets: The desired outcome;

6. Analysis: Analyzes the situation and the underlying causes that have created the gap between the current situation and the desired outcome;

7. Proposed Countermeasures: Proposes some corrective actions or countermeasures to address the problem, close the gap or reach a goal;

8. Plan: Prescribes an action plan of who will do what and when they will do it, in order to reach the goal; and

9. Follow-up: Creates a review/learning process and anticipates remaining issues.

For myself, I found nothing special for that compared with our kaizen presentation or report. However, I still promoted the tools because it has the benefit for,

1. Easy to share, you can post the A3 form anywhere because it is not so big in size but included everything you need on it. For the normal kaizen report, people liked to make it as heavy as they can to show their effort spent on it. It is not lean!

2. Easy to keep record, one file holder can store hundred of the report and good for the people to review and update of it.
3. Clear stream of thinking in problem solving, it stated everything we need to consider in problem solving by sequences. We would not missed anything when we are going to improve the target.

Offcause, you can use A4 if you can write so small and the others can see clear what you wrote. On the other hand, you also can make it in A0 so that the others can read it like a map and feel sick in front of it. Altough, it is nothing special but it is a good way we should follow, because it is one kind of lean concept apply in documentation.