A3 Reports: Tool for Process Improvement

The A3 report is a tool that Toyota Motor Corporation uses to propose solutions to problems, give status reports on ongoing projects, and report results of information gathering activity. In our current research to apply Toyota Production System principles in a hospital setting, we have adapted the A3 problem-solving report for use by hospital staff to improve their organizational processes, and have successfully applied it to numerous problems within a local hospital. This paper presents an A3 report template, and describes the problem-solving approach it represents through an example.