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A Guide to Implementing the
Theory of Constraints (TOC) |
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PowerPoint
Presentations There
are currently 7 PowerPoint presentations available online to anyone, the
remainder are for client use only.
The
first two public presentations deal with fundamental issues of modern
organizations (industrial or service).
The third is a reformulation of the lieutenant’s cloud, it builds upon
knowledge in the second presentation and offers additional hints at
constructing systemic clouds. The
fourth is a short collection of common needs that are found over a wide range
of systemic clouds. The fifth
presentation is about the fundamentals of systemic production. The sixth follows on from production. Now that we can produce things with
excellent DIFOT, we ought to make sure we are also making money as well. The seventh presentation was found in draw
where it had languished for some time and deserves a wider audience. Each
presentation is explained in more detail below and the link takes you to a
starting page from where you can download the presentation. There
is a fundamental paradox that underlies the Theory of Constraints. It is not the dilemma of global vs local;
but rather the underlying drivers of that dilemma. It has to do with our own psychology, and
our own experience. To understand this
paradox is to understand how to implement Theory of Constraints. After all, a paradox can only exist because
the logic of what to do is different from what we expect. This paradox has not been articulated
before. It is presented here in the
form of a self-pacing PowerPoint presentation. It draws upon the neurological levels model
of Robert Dilts and Gregory Bateson, with a liberal helping from a past
Christmas edition of the Economist.
You can download this presentation from here; Values, Beliefs, & Industrialization. Once
you have viewed the first PowerPoint, I hope that you will better understand
why common sense isn’t apparently so common.
However, there is more that can be built into this understanding. Here is a follow-up PowerPoint; Logical Types, Clouds, and Fantasies. Here I seek to show that it is an error of
logical typing that causes the fundamental paradox that we observed
above. This draws upon the work of
Gregory Bateson on logical levels, Elliott Jaques on hierarchy, and Jerry
Harvey on negative fantasies. There is
a very nice commonality between each of these approaches. The
lieutenant’s cloud is an approach that seeks to identify and break
misalignments between responsibility and authority. Oftentimes subordinates are given
responsibility but not always the requisite authority to carry out their
roles. When we fail to address this
misalignment we create the conditions necessary for continual fire-fighting,
hence the other name of this cloud – the fire fighting cloud. The lieutenants cloud/fire fighting cloud
is, however, simply another variant of a system cloud. The
lieutenants cloud/fire fighting cloud is a system cloud upside-down. In order to see and understand its systemic
applicability, we need a Reformulated Lieutenant’s Cloud that is
essentially downside-up. All the
knowledge that is necessary to understand this is presented in the earlier
two PowerPoints. I think that there is
a great deal of utility in understanding the Reformulated Lieutenant’s
Cloud. Paradoxically, if you find that
you are continually using it, then systemic solutions are evading you. A short
and sweet presentation follows in A Suite of Systemic Clouds. There are a number of common pairs of needs
(or B-C’s in the jargon) that are useful in understanding what flavor of
systemic cloud you are dealing with. A
systemic cloud is, as I see it, a kind of lock that sits between where we are
now and where we want to be in the future, all we need is the key. We can open the lock on a case-by-case
basis by examining the erroneous assumptions in the cloud or we can open it
once-and-for-all by supplying a key.
Here is one of the keys; Drum Buffer Rope & Systemic Production. This is a big file, about 7 Mb, due to my
use of a base diagram with a large number of elements in it. I hope that it is worth your patience in
downloading. If we
are going to use a systemic approach such as drum-buffer-rope, or critical
chain, or replenishment and distribution, then we ought also to use a
systemic approach to management accounting.
Anything less is fraught with danger.
Throughput Accounting – Systemic Accounting introduces the
key elements of this approach and shows how any process can be improved just
by looking afresh at the management accounting using this approach. Found
languishing in a drawer, this presentation ought to be somewhere where more
people can see it. It is a graphical
summary of Bill Dettmer’s approach to strategy formulation as put forward in
his book Strategic Navigation. Take
a look, even if your interest isn’t strategy, it will show you the
interrelationships that exist between the various Thinking Process
tools. Thinking Processes For Strategy This Webpage Copyright © 2008-2009
by Dr K. J. Youngman |