The Bowler Chart—Tracking Your Projects

Hoshin Kanri (or “policy management” in English) is a way to manage the objectives of both you and your people and also align these objectives with the overall goals and directions of the company. One possible and useful companion document to track the progress of these objectives throughout the year is the bowler chart, or bowling chart. In general, this chart can be used to track the progress of an improvement project. Let me give you an introduction to bowler charts.

Introduction

The bowler chart is used to track data, not only but also for hoshin kanri, throughout a time period, typically a year (since the hoshin kanri is usually an annual cycle). It is called a bowler chart, or bowling chart, due to its similar setup to score sheets used in bowling. For the sport, this score sheet is a chart tracking the points of multiple players throughout a game.

Let me first (for reference) show you an example bowling score sheet. The sheet below tracks the points for six players in a bowling game. The first row of each player shows the number of pins bowled for each ball, with two attempts for each turn (called a “frame”). The second row tracks how the points increase with each round played.

Like any long established game, there is a lot of weirdness going on. Special symbols are added for strikes (all pins knocked over in one attempt) and spares (all pins knocked over with two attempts), which counts some of the next turns twice. The last frame has three columns, since sometimes you get an extra ball. And I am sure there is more oddness going on that I don’t even know about. But let’s leave the details of bowling to the actual bowlers, and have a look at the bowler chart in lean manufacturing.

The Bowler Chart Fundamentals

The bowling score sheet is loosely similar to the bowler chart used to track improvements or projects. Here’s an example overview of the bowler chart in the image below. Most of the chart is pretty easy to understand, albeit there are some pitfalls in using this type of chart (more on that later).

The top half is the usual organizational stuff: who the owner of the chart is, when it was last updated (if it is a digital chart), and what the chart is all about. Below that are rows for the individual improvement projects, tasks, deliverables, etc., each of which has an owner that is responsible for the project. If you use the bowler chart to track a hoshin kanri, each improvement goal of the hoshin kanri would have one row on the chart. Each project also has a numeric measurement of the initial situation, including its unit.

The second half of the chart then tracks this numeric value over time (often a year), and compares it to the target value for that point in time. If you are on target or better, then the actual value field is green. If you are behind, then the field is red. So, in essence, a Bowler chart is a table to track the progress of improvement projects. Like many lean tools, it is not magic; it is merely making things more visual and tracking your numbers.

Pitfalls and Caveats

However, this does not mean that it is easy to use. There are many possible pitfalls and caveats where you could go wrong in using a bowler chart. Let’s go through some common mistakes:

The Owner

The bolwer chart has an owner. This is NOT a department or function, but an actual living person. If there is any question about the chart, who are you going to call? By the way, this also applies to the owners of the individual projects. These can be the same as the owner of the bowler chart, but can also be a member ofa team in charge of this project.

The Projects

The rows are a number of projects. And this is already the cause of the first possible misunderstanding. The bolwer chart is NOT a KPI dashboard to track your regular KPIs. It is a specific tools to track improvement projects, ongoing tasks, time dependent deliverables, etc. The chart is not designed just observing your long term KPIs (like your plant-wide defect rate). It is designed to track an actual ongoing improvement project where, for example, you want to reduce your defect rate from 6% for a certain product or type of defect to 2%.

Another common mistake with tracking projects is that there are too many of them. An ideal number of projects for one person is no more than three projects. It is a common misconception that giving a lot of projects to a person gets a lot done. But instead, having a lot of projects just increases the management overhead at the cost of actually getting things done. Just because a bowler chart template has multiple lines, it does not mean that you need to fill them all with projects. And don’t even think about adding a second page to the chart with even more projects! See also my post series How to Manage Your Lean Projects.

The Numeric Targets

First, each project should have one numerical target associated with it. And that is the first catch already. It should be numerical (i.e., quantitative). A qualitative target is much harder to evaluate and track.

Second, similar to practical problem-solving, this target should be nailed down and connected to the actual improvement project. If you are merely tracking plant-wide cost, you won’t see if your improvements actually make a difference. If you are tracking the labor cost for one part on one segment of the value stream (e.g., the labor cost at the welding of a particular part), you will see much better how much of an impact your effort has. In other words, make the target SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound).

In my next post I will continue with more caveats on the target progression and the use of color, before suggesting a  possible improvement to make the progress even more visual. (Spoiler: Use a diagram!). Now, go out, track your improvements, and Organize your Industry!

P.S.: Many thanks to Bernd Sägmüller from Jenoptik for his inspiration and knowledge.