Experience with TOC

TOC Baby Steps with Self

Workshops Facilitation
 Large scale Turnaround (Twice in 2 years)
What Went Well
A) Burning Platform
Hard choice to “Improve” or risk loss of 10,000 jobs
B) System Approach
Treating Global Steel Market as system instead of the
Company
C) Cooperation with Stakeholders
Support from suppliers, employees, Local government,
Trade Unions, Consultants and Program Office
D) Communication
Frequent and honest 2-way communication of
Challenges, Ideas and Opportunities
E) Greater Alignment
Eliminating choices/ options to create alignment
F) Rigor
Rigorous tracking of ideas implementation & results
What Went Wrong/ Challenges
A) Tough Unpopular Decisions
- Sacrificing 1200 jobs across UK including
closure of the last Steel Mill of Scotland
- Closure of British Steel Pension Scheme, a win-
win-win appeared lose-lose-lose
B) Dominance of Traditional Measurements
Pre-dominance of Efficiency and Cost
measurements over Throughput and sustainability
C) What we like vs What is good
Politics of Nationality, Turf, Self-Interest, Short
term gains often overcome Rationality and Greater
Good
D) System Understanding
Brexit, Chinese Overproduction (excessive
production) and consequent political distraction.
Thus definition of System remained narrower
 Dynamic Simulation (Digital Twins) together with Dr Alan Barnard
What Went Well What Went Wrong/ Challenges
A) Safe Environment A) Model reflection of current
To test the hypothesis & interventions understanding
B) Exposed Moving Bottlenecks - Model reflected the understanding and
capability of input providers
Hence temporary changes in Sub-ordination
riles - Time estimates for model building affected
by data, process and testing inputs
C) Digital Twin
Digital Twin with Live Data to compare alternate
B) Mystery Analysis
reality or post mortem Mystery analysis process to understand the
gap between model output Vs Reality
D) Improved Understanding
- Better understand & documentation of C) Usage Challenge
processes Training and capability of Users
- Understanding gap between documented vs D) Deriving Benefits
real processes Lack of conviction or changed reality
 TOC Combining with Other Improvement Techniques
What Went Well What Went Wrong/ Challenges
A) S&T Layer
S&T layer works well with BO&S, Business Objectives, A) Productivity/ Efficiency mindset
Strategies, Sub-strategies, Means, KRAs Dealing with idle manpower; tendency to Lay-off
B) N&S Check B) Understanding Waste
4-student analysis with N&S check Poor understanding of waste
C) Building DCE C) Cost mindset
Building DCE using Kano Model Tendency to prioritize on cost/ inventory over
D) Bottlenecks vs non-bottlenecks throughput
- OEE, MTTR and variation reduction for bottlenecks D) Non-bottlenecks vs Bottlenecks
- Outsourcing decisions OEE of non-bottlenecks traded at par with the
E) CCR bottlenecks
Identifying CCR with Loss Tree, EVA Driver Tree E) Multitasking
F) Sub-ordination rules Tendency to work on multiple projects
simultaneously
Using sub-ordination rules using BSC lead vs lag indicators
G) Win-win visibility
Win-win visibility on EVA driver tree
H) TOC / VWM visibility
DM system and colour priorities of TOC/ VWM
 Case-lets to discuss / Take Lessons from - TGS
1) Turnaround in financials
2) Multi-project environment DDP
3) Discovering Factory within Factory
a) 81 Hrs experiment – single piece work flow
b) Spindle running time
c) Flame Cutting time
4) Learning from Failure: Case of making pinion
on non-bottlenecks
5) Learning to Out-source: Delegation rules
6) Working hard vs Working smart: The 9 min 59
sec experiment & challenge
7) Windscreen Verses Rear View Mirror: When
negative Throughput is worth it !!
8) Rapid response selling: If there is a tail, there
must be a dog
 General Observations
What Went Well Typical Challenges
A) Ambitious Targets Spur A) Lack of Syndication with UVACs
- Innovations/ Paradigm Shift (Untrained Vocal Articulate Critics)
- Alignment B) Cost / Batching Considerations
B) Tracking and Review / War Rooms
Rigor and focus using war rooms
C) Top Management Attention
Involvement of Management
D) Internal Evangelists
E) Moving with “good enough”
• Analysis
• Direction of Solution (S&T / BO&S)
 Improvising TOC Implementation
1) Art of the Possible
2) War Rooms – with Colours (Black - red – amber – green – blue – light blue)
Light Blue: Dealing with Batching Constraints
3) Prospective Hindsight
4) Freedom to Fail: 4 Student Analysis/ Mystery Analysis
5) Degree of maturity and Freedom to Fail using delivery discount
6) Beyond MTS/ MTO : FTO and postponed differentiation
7) Hub and Spoke: Optimizing beyond SQRT n
8) Nuances of Buffer Management
Market Buffer, Capacity buffer, Buffer through MTA/MTO, Product buffer, Line buffer, Outsourcing /
capacity on call
9) Alternatives to chocking release: Capacity creation
Deliberate idling of resources, paying for swing capacity, insurance spare capacity
10) Pricing as a flow control mechanism- Based on Buffer Colour
 CCPM for Large IT Projects
What Went Well What Went Wrong/ Challenges
A) Visibility A) Parallel Modules
Visibility of progress / Lack of it Parallel modules meant too many assumptions in
B) Intervention absence of dependent inputs (Ignoring dependencies
Creating focal points for intervention quickly meant big trouble for system integration testing)
C) Buffer management B) Untested Hypothesis
Buffer recovery process spurred innovation Working on untested hypothesis e.g. Variant
configuration used even for MTA, lead to avoidable
D) Modular Release dependencies, means higher complexity
No big bang
C) UAT
E) Decision making UAT by untrained people / unconvinced by TOC logic
Small decision team
D) Quality
F) Help desk Quality clearance delays triggered replenishment
Importance of help desk and review orders, eating capacity and causing blockages
 CCPM for Maintenance Projects, Green Field & Brown Field Projects
What Went Well
A) Very effective in 3-5 days maintenance
projects updated hourly. Invariably saved
time or allowed additional scope
B) Full kit release, offline settings, use of
alternatives to scaffolding and SMED
principles working well to reduce time and
injury
C) Dependencies exposed early and brought into
focus non-critical tasks when their buffer
penetration became high
D) Many benefits simply came from better planning /
detailing of dependencies
E) Innovation in eliminating dependencies /
buffering resources
What Went Wrong/ Challenges
A) Delayed engagement of CCPM or even PERT
tools eats away buffer during approval/
planning. Procurement stages
B) EPC / turnkey contracts (generally based on
objectives to get job done with least cost) dis-
incentivize contractors to deploy extra
resources
C) Tendency to work in parallel restricts use of
maximum resources on single task
D) Excessive use of contract labour means lack of
training/ use of experience for new projects
 Successful program Management
Best Practices
Degree of Maturity (DOM
A) Program management office (PMO) headed
by an experienced and respected individual- DOM1: Idea of rough benefits estimate
Hi-Pot
B) Tracking the ideas funnel and implementation DOM2: Qualify the idea with a pre-feasibility study
through Degree of Maturity or research back–up or prototype / POC
C) Developing in-house expertise (even evangelists)
D) Rigorous training
DOM3: Financially vetted proposal / Bankable
E) Senior management review
feasibility report / POC quantified
F) Recognizing or even inventing early success and
publically celebrating it
G) Communicate – communicate - communicate DOM4: Implementation begins/ orders placed/ roll-
out

DOM5: Holding the gamins for 3 months/ 3 qtrs

 Tools that worked well for me
A) Five focusing steps
4- Student Analysis
B) Conflict cloud in meetings
C) Resource maximization on constraints OBJECTIVE
D) Batching considerations” too much or Too Little ?
E) 6 Buffer Colour Schemes: Black – Red – Light

F)
Blue – Green – Amber in that order
Rules to Break Rules
Not
Achieved C D
G) Necessity and Sufficiency check using 4 student
analysis
H) Degree of Maturity (DOM)
I)
J)
Delivery Discount
Open Honest communication
Achieved A B
K) Seeking Inherent simplicity
L) Focus on flow: starvation, Blockage, variation STRATEGY-> Deployed Not Deployed
M) Cash is King, but Customer is Prime Minister
 TATA TISCON: Retail Distribution/ Building DCE/ Segmentation
A) Tata Tiscon became the largest retail brand
for TMT, a position that remain
unchallenged with high volume of sales at
highest price
B) With replenishment system in place many
distributors TOI reached 100%
C) It became possible to cross-sell other
complimentary / Value added products
through the same retail channel
D) Analyzing the significant unmet needs by asking
the customers their reason to buy, made it
possible to create a DCE.
E) Segmenting customers based on needs exposed
by success of sales creed new micro-segments
to target.