{"id":884,"date":"2011-07-02T13:30:35","date_gmt":"2011-07-02T13:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=884"},"modified":"2011-07-02T13:30:35","modified_gmt":"2011-07-02T13:30:35","slug":"low-tec-toc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=884","title":{"rendered":"Low-Tech-Toc"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Beware the Magicians who\u00a0wave\u00a0High Technology Wands and promise Miraculous\u00a0Improvements if you buy their\u00a0Black Magic Boxes!<\/p>\n

If\u00a0a Magician is\u00a0not willing\u00a0to\u00a0open the box and\u00a0show you the inner workings then run away – quickly.\u00a0 Their story may be true, the\u00a0Miracle may indeed be possible, but\u00a0if they cannot or will not explain HOW the magic trick is done then you\u00a0will be caught in their spell and will\u00a0become their slave forever.<\/p>\n

Not all Magicians have honourable intentions\u00a0– those who have been\u00a0seduced by the Dark Side will ensnare you\u00a0and will bleed you dry like greedy leeches!<\/p>\n

In the early 1980’s a brilliant innovator called Eli\u00a0Goldratt created a Black Box called OPT that was\u00a0the tangible manifestation of his\u00a0intellectual brainchild called\u00a0ToC –\u00a0Theory of Constraints. OPT was a piece of complex computer software that was intended\u00a0to\u00a0rescue manufacturing\u00a0from their ignorance and to miraculously deliver dramatic increases in profit. It didn’t.<\/p>\n

Eli Goldratt was a physicist and his Black Box was built on\u00a0strong foundations of Process Physics – it was not Snake Oil – it did work.\u00a0 The problem was\u00a0that\u00a0it did not sell: Not enough people\u00a0believed\u00a0his claims\u00a0and those who did discovered that the Black Box was not as easy to use as the Magician suggested.\u00a0\u00a0So\u00a0Eli Goldratt wrote a\u00a0book called The Goal<\/em> in which he explained, in parable form,\u00a0the Principles of ToC and\u00a0the theoretical foundations on which his Black Box was built.\u00a0 The book was a big success but\u00a0his Black Box still did not sell; just\u00a0an explanation of how\u00a0his Black Box worked was enough for people to apply the Principles of ToC<\/em> and to get dramatic\u00a0results. So,\u00a0Eli\u00a0abandoned his plan of making\u00a0a fortune selling Black Boxes and\u00a0set up the Goldratt Institute to disseminate the Principles of\u00a0ToC – which he did\u00a0with considerably more success. Eli Goldratt died in June 2011 after a short battle with cancer and\u00a0the World has lost a great innovator and a founding father\u00a0of Improvement Science. His\u00a0legacy lives on in\u00a0the books he wrote that\u00a0chart his\u00a0personal journey of discovery.<\/p>\n

The Principles of ToC<\/em> are central both to process improvement and to process design.\u00a0 As\u00a0Eli unintentionally demonstrated,\u00a0it is more effective and much quicker to learn the Principles of ToC<\/em> pragmatically and with\u00a0low technology –\u00a0such as a book – than with a complex, expensive,\u00a0high technology Black Box.\u00a0 As many people have discovered – adding complex technology to a complex problem does not create a simple solution!\u00a0Many processes are relatively uncomplicated\u00a0and do not require high technology\u00a0solutions. An example is\u00a0the challenge\u00a0of designing a high productivity\u00a0schedule\u00a0when there is variation in both the content and the volume of the work.<\/p>\n

If our required goal is to improve productivity (or profit) then we want\u00a0to improve\u00a0the throughput\u00a0and\/or\u00a0to reduce the resources\u00a0required. That is\u00a0relatively easy when there is no variation in\u00a0content and no variation in volume – such as when we are making just one product at a constant rate – like a\u00a0Model-T Ford in Black! Add some content and volume variation and the challenge\u00a0becomes\u00a0a lot trickier! From the 1950’s the move\u00a0from mass production to\u00a0mass customisation\u00a0in the automobile industry created\u00a0this\u00a0new challenge and spawned a series of\u00a0 innovative approaches such as the Toyota Production System (Lean), Six Sigma and Theory of Constraints.\u00a0\u00a0TPS focussed on\u00a0small batches, fast changeovers and low technology (kanbans\u00a0or cards) to keep inventory low and flow high; Six Sigma focussed on\u00a0scientifically identifying and eliminating all\u00a0sources of variation so that work flows smoothly and in “statistical control”; ToC\u00a0focussed on identifying the “constraint steps” in the system and\u00a0then on scheduling tasks so that the constraints never run out of work.<\/p>\n

When applied to a complex system of interlinked and interdependent processes the ToC method requires a complicated Black Box to do the scheduling because\u00a0we cannot do it in our heads. However,\u00a0when applied to\u00a0a\u00a0simpler system or to a part of a complex system it can be done\u00a0using a low technology\u00a0method called “paper and\u00a0pen”. The technique is called Template Scheduling and there is a real example in the\u00a0“Three Wins<\/em>” book where\u00a0the template schedule design was tested using a computer\u00a0simulation to\u00a0measure\u00a0the\u00a0resilience of the\u00a0design\u00a0to natural variation – and the computer was not used to do the actual scheduling. There was no Black Box doiung the scheduling.\u00a0The outcome of the design was a piece of paper that defined\u00a0the designed-and-tested template schedule:\u00a0and the design testing\u00a0predicted\u00a0a 40%\u00a0increase in throughput using the same resources. This\u00a0dramatic jump in productivity might be regarded as\u00a0 “miraculous” or even “impossible”\u00a0but only to\u00a0someone who was not aware of the template scheduling method. The reality is that that the designed\u00a0schedule worked\u00a0just as predicted – there was\u00a0no miracle, no\u00a0magic, no\u00a0Magician and no\u00a0Black Box.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beware the Magicians who\u00a0wave\u00a0High Technology Wands and promise Miraculous\u00a0Improvements if you buy their\u00a0Black Magic Boxes! If\u00a0a Magician is\u00a0not willing\u00a0to\u00a0open the box and\u00a0show you the inner workings then run away – quickly.\u00a0 Their story may be true, the\u00a0Miracle may indeed be possible, but\u00a0if they cannot or will not explain HOW the magic trick is done then … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Low-Tech-Toc”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,23,30,32,41,42,43,45,46],"tags":[91,103,217,281,282,286,289],"class_list":["post-884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-operations","category-productivity","category-stories","category-how","category-why","category-what","category-teach","tag-design","tag-eli-goldratt","tag-productivity","tag-technology","tag-template-scheduling","tag-theory-of-constraints","tag-throughput"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}