Decision Making – Focus on the Goal Almost every manager is aware of Pareto’s law, the important few – the trivial many which is often thought of as the 80/20 rule. 80% of results are generated by 20% of the actions. To improve your effectiveness, one only need to focus on the 20% and you’ll … Continue reading
Category: Theory of Constraints
The Gestalt of ToC “Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.” – Isaac Newton The Theory of Constraints. What sort of management strategy is that? Who calls a management approach a “theory”? And “constraints”; isn’t that the same thing as a “bottleneck”? If you’ve read … Continue reading
In my previous post about checking your assumptions, I talked about the rules and requirements about your process. The supply chain is no different. After all, rules are made, boundary conditions established around how you deal with your suppliers. Therefore, you should also look at your supply chain policies to find possibilities to increase output … Continue reading
To increase output, whether in a disaster or in everyday pressures, you must challenge your assumptions to find solutions. Usually, the solution is not obvious (otherwise, it would have been implemented, right?), so you have to dig deeper. Challenging assumptions helps us see where we can change the process. There is still more to get … Continue reading
The more contractors or departments involved in a project, the more chances for variation and, often, more confusion. There is always the opportunity for misalignment and miscommunication. The larger the organization, the more opportunity for missing cues on priorities and direction. For the process owner, the challenge is to align a team to drive progress … Continue reading
Is your system in chaos? What do I mean by chaos? I mean resource shortages, priority battles, constant expediting, too much work in process, or too much rework. Everything just takes too long. Little’s Law is a very simple concept that will help you gain control over your system. Mastering this concept will arm you … Continue reading
What if you can’t simply reallocate resources to maximize flow because the constraint is the process or a machine itself? Sometimes it takes a little more creativity to identify how to exploit the constraint (the drum), but just because a machine is the constraint does not mean the fix is more expensive equipment. The key … Continue reading
The process helped BP save more than $200 million by identifying key measurements and planning the bottleneck into the operation.
We did a very successful Theory of Constraints Implementation a while back, that incorporated a wide variety of approaches.
Critical Chain Project Management
Process Reengineering
Supply Chain Management
The results were great. So we made a presentation telling our story. Here it is on slide share.
Today, companies are focused on increasing throughput – the rate at which a company generates money through sales. They want to expand products, customer base, markets, and so on. They want to grow as much as possible, as quickly as possible. They do not want to focus on shrinking their company or labor force. Yet, the most commonly used financial tools tell companies to focus on cutting costs in order to maximize profits, making expenses the focus of companies, not sales generation. This often leads management to make decisions that actually harm a company.