Yokoten: Best Practice Sharing from a success
Last updated: October 20, 2025 Read in fullscreen view
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What is Yokoten?
Yokoten means “horizontal deployment”. It refers to the practice of copying good results of kaizen in one area to other areas. Yokoten applies more broadly to copying product design ideas as well as better practices in general.
“Best practice sharing” comes close to the meaning of yokoten. In modern business that phrase often means e-mailing PowerPoint presentations, comparing results between divisions and debating the differences between various round fruits.
In project management, Yokoten is a Japanese manufacturing concept that is especially relevant to Project Managers. Yokoten means 'Best Practice Sharing'.
Yoko: Sideways
Tenkai: Development
It's the best translation of a term adopted by Toyota. It reflects the idea of transferring ideas and information among peers.
Yokoten builds on another, more familiar concept: 'Kaizen'
Kaizen is a continuous flow of improvements. Everyone on your team has the right - and responsibility - to spot ways to do things better.
Once you find an idea that works, through Kaizen, the next thing to do is to share it. That's Yokoten. In Toyota's usage, it carries the ideas of:
- sharing a new idea
- transmitting it across the organization (rather than top-down)
- allowing others to copy it
- co-operation between teams
- a shared sense of responsibility and success
Yokoten binds teams and work-groups together into a larger team. For Toyota, it has a big impact on results. It is a 'success-multiplier'.
Where does Yokoten Happen within the Problem Solving Cycle?
Within the 8 step practical problem solving process known as TBP (Toyota Business Practice) the yokoten activity happens in step 8.
- Clarify the problem
- Break down the problem
- Set a target
- Analyze the root cause
- Develop countermeasures
- See countermeasures through
- Evaluate both results and process
- Standardize successes, learn from failures
Within the PDCA cycle yokoten happens in the Act (A) stage, corresponding to step 8 above.
Lesson Learned Meetings are not Enough
Your team members could go further. Encourage them to share new discoveries among themselves. Give them permission to see what other team members are doing.
Your role is to encourage this and get the word out. Simply copelling people to copy innovations and improvements is a step. But for sustainable personal growth and team performance improvements, you need more.
It's attitudes and thinking that people need to share, copy, and adopt. We only really learn lessons when we adopt new ideas and the thinking behind them.
Why Are We Slow to Copy Good Practices through Yokoten?
Yokoten is an essential part of long-term success in a lean culture, but can also have a big impact on short-term results. Yokoten is a success multiplier. Perform a good kaizen and copy the results, and you immediately duplicate the impact. Yet we don’t hear so much about yokoten. Why is this? In a typical company the best practices can become lost among the noise, buried beneath the day-to-day fire-fighting or even deliberately hidden from others in to make one’s own self or group look good. There may be localized incentives in place that prevent yokoten from happening. There are other obstacles to yokoten, including a lack of documented standard as a result of kaizen, weak “go see” culture, or no metrics or ways to agree on what is in fact a better practice.
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