A3 Thinking is often used in Lean Six Sigma initiatives, and it can help organizations become more efficient, reduce costs, and improve quality.

The A3 Thinking process encourages structured problem-solving, continuous learning, and improving performance through short-term and long-term goal setting. It allows teams to break down problems into smaller, more manageable pieces, and to clearly identify root causes and appropriate solutions.

The A3 tool gets its name from its paper size, as the improvement approach seeks to solve a problem on a single sheet of paper. At the most basic level, A3 Thinking is a structured problem-solving approach that individuals or improvement teams can apply to help address operational and strategic challenging problems. When solving problems, the A3 helps to provide a framework that starts with clearly defining the problem, prioritizing solutions, and then testing the solutions to verify that the ideas and process changes result in improvement.

At an advanced level, the A3 can help to communicate the organization’s strategy and help departments and teams align to that objective. In addition to this, the A3 can be used as a project status report, a mentoring tool, and a format for sharing internal best practices.