Video Presentations

Videos available from TOC World^® 2001 in Los Angeles.

JLA-1 - Dr. Eli Goldratt - Keynote Address

"Trust is nice as long as there are measurements that serve as a watchdog."

In this keynote address, Dr. Eli Goldratt shares his latest insights regarding supply chains and their key measurements. Since very often these chains are composed of independent companies or business units, the right measurements must create the appropriate linkages between them to enable them to interact effectively.

Eli begins by challenging the idea that companies must abandon local optima (the individual company's bottom line) in order to achieve the global optimization of the entire chain. He continues by challenging the pricing policies that exist today within the supply chains. Finally he asks the audience to examine what should be measured in a supply chain and to identify the types of things not done properly in supply chains. Continuing this train of thought, he explains that if we look at the things that should have been done but were not, and things that should not have been done but were, we will discover the measurements of reliability (or more specifically unreliability) and effectiveness (or more specifically ineffectiveness) currently in use in supply chains. Eli gives the audience the formulas to use to measure both reliability and effectiveness, and explains how it is expanded across the supply chain.

JLA-2 - Kiowa

Presenter: Gregory M. Brown, President

Providing high quality die-castings at the customer's door when they want them is a Kiowa tradition. Kiowa, a provider of zinc and aluminum die-casting, has continually expanded its capabilities by adding machining, subassembly, and finishing in order to provide customers with parts ready for assembly into their products. Kiowa has experienced steady growth over the years and today is one of the best equipped producers of close tolerance aluminum and zinc die castings in the United States. Primary markets include farm and construction equipment, computer peripherals and electronic equipment, telecommunications, automotive, diesel engine, and power tools. Headquartered in Marshalltown, Iowa, Kiowa serves worldwide markets through its manufacturing facilities in Marshalltown and affiliate manufacturers in China.

Like many companies today, Kiowa found themselves with an external market constraint. They had more capacity than they could sell. Kiowa used TOC Multi-Project Management to strengthen their design capabilities allowing them to create UnRefusable Offers to the market to increase sales and diversify their market base.

Kiowa carried out a complete TOC analysis of the problems facing customers in targeted market segments. Finding leverage points where Kiowa could use their superior capabilities to make these customers much more successful, offers resulting win-win solutions were developed and presented to their customers in a way that created rapid buy-in. The resulting new business has allowed Kiowa to dramatically reduce their dependence on a few key customers and expand into new markets that provide a much more stable base of customer demand.

JLA-3 - Shea Homes

Presenters: Jody Dents, TOC Administrator; Paul Kalkbrenner, Vice President, Construction; Jim O'Brien, Scheduling Manager; Mike Romelfanger, Community Development Coordinator

Shea Homes, located in Phoenix, is nationally recognized as an innovative and highly successful home builder. When they decided to take their company to the next level, TOC provided the leverage. It enabled the transformation from operating as five silos to one cohesive unit with laser-like focusing on throughput. They are using TOC across the acquisition cycle: land procurement, land development, operations, sales and construction. The positive results to their bottom line came quickly and are very impressive.

JLA-4 - Institute for Defense Analyses

Presenter: John Tillson, Research Staff

The mission of IDA is to assist the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Commands, and Defense Agencies in addressing important national security issues. IDA also conducts related research for other government agencies on national problems for which the Institute's skills and expertise are especially suited. IDA was incorporated in 1956 as a Federally Funded Research and Development Center. The research efforts of IDA's 800 employees provide revenues of over $100 million a year.

In response to a Congressionally mandated study of the DoD Readiness Reporting System, the IDA Project Leader, the only Jonah in IDA, applied the Thinking Processes to identify the core conflict and to devise a solution. The central aspect of the solution was the recognition of the entire Department of Defense as a system of systems and the recognition that the readiness of each system was dependent on the capacity of each system's constraint. The new administration is currently considering a decision to implement this system DoD-wide.

JLA-5 - Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, together with F-22 System Program Office and Boeing

Presenters: Bob Casey, F22 Weapons System Integration & Test, Lockheed Martin; David K.Christ, F-22 Manufacturing Plans, The Boeing Company; Jim Pitstick, Industrial Engineer, F-22 SPO

Take an environment in which you have multiple customers, contractors, and deliverables. Add to it developmental testing, manufacturing, financing, and politics spread out across the country. Blend in a good healthy dose of skepticism, and you have a small sample of the environment of the F-22 project. Add into this stew conflicts between multiple necessary conditions, all of which must be met, and you have an idea of the task ahead of those who undertook the responsibility to apply the Theory of Constraints and Multi-Project Management to the final development and delivery of the F-22.

This presentation will offer insight into the hurdles faced by a team committed to making sense out of the tremendous complexities of our acquisition process. Understand the difficulties faced when you have multiple deliverables within a single project, and you are committed to global thinking, planning, and decision making in a local versus local environment.

See the Theory of Constraints in action as it is being applied and what impact it is beginning to have.

JLA-6 - Intel Israel (NCG-I)

Presenter: Rony Mann, ICG-I Q&R and Planning Manager

So what's the big deal about project management?

Why is it so difficult to complete projects on time? We plan and we track the progress...and in most cases we're still late! So many factors dictate the end results...dynamic environment, definition change, prioritization between projects, too many dependencies during the integration periods, resources being available on time, wrong task duration estimation, and lack of commitment. What is the real problem? For Intel Israel it is how to deal with uncertainty.

Current processes involve adding safety time to each task - while top management cuts project time due to market pressure. At the end of the planning cycle the project includes a large amount of safety time, yet still does not meet the deadlines set by management. It is impossible to manage the safety, inserted into each activity. Project management sees the delays only after the safety time has already been consumed!

So what's the solution?

NCG-I implemented TOC Critical Chain Multi-Project Management. As a result, they were able to identify the Critical Chain - (the longest path through the project network considering both task and resource dependencies). This was a very different way of managing projects compared to non-TOC methodologies which look for the Critical Path - (where resources are not taken into account in defining the longest path.) By implementing TOC project management, the constraint was identified and the entire project was adjusted to support the constraint. NCG-I then managed the safety time through aggregated buffers inserted in the right locations instead of spread out across the individual tasks. A few simple weekly indicators based on tracking the buffers' percentage of consumption set the stage for Buffer Management. This enabled them to identify the source of delays and take actions to fix the issues before real project delays actually occurred. Since NCG-I implemented this methodology all products have been delivered on time or early.

JLA-7 - Brush Engineered Materials, Inc.

Presenter: Thomas J. Piazza, Director, Supply Chain Management

Brush Engineered Materials Inc., through its wholly owned subsidiaries, is a leading manufacturer of high performance engineered materials serving the global telecommunications, computer, automotive electronics, industrial components and optical markets. This international corporation has sales of over $550 million and employs 2,500 people. Engineered materials supplied by Brush can be found in a host of critical and demanding applications requiring superior levels of strength, reliability, miniaturization, weight reduction, thermal and electrical conductivity, power distribution, and reflectivity. End uses of their products include cellular phones and other wireless communication devices, notebook and network computers, electronic components in cars and trucks, and life enhancing or protective devices such as medical x-ray equipment, satellites, and fire protection sprinklers.

The TOC Production Solution was implemented at Brush Engineered Material's largest subsidiary; Brush Wellman Inc. Brush Wellman is the only fully integrated producer of beryllium, beryllium alloys, and beryllia ceramic in the world. Learn how the implementation of Drum-Buffer-Rope/Buffer Management and Replenishment helped Brush Wellman's non-strip businesses to increase sales and operating profits, while significantly improving customer on-time-delivery. In addition, learn how TOC has been integrated into the culture and see the tools that were created to help manage the process on a day-to-day basis. Finally, a review of lessons learned and potential pitfalls to avoid when implementing the TOC Production and Distribution Solutions will be clearly outlined and discussed.

JLA-8 - Verhaert

Presenter: Patrick Leonard, AGI Certified Associate - Belgium

Verhaert is a developer of diverse, innovative products ranging from payment and ticketing terminals to automated diamond grinding tools, scientific laboratories for shuttles, space stations, and small satellites. The common element in these activities is a system development and product development methodology. Currently, 70% of their business is for the European Space Agency and 30% is industrial product development and production.

Verhaert, a 150 person, privately owned company, applied the Theory of Constraints to develop simple solutions for complex projects. These solutions have provided a generic method to successfully deal with management and staff conflicts, suppliers and customers.

This presentation will demonstrate the optimal way to manage complex projects and organization through the Theory of Constraints.

JLA-9 - Seagate Technology

Presenter: Vanessa Reed Howard, Project Manager

The Seagate Technology Development Chain
Beyond Project Management

Seagate Technology is a global leader in the design and manufacture of information storage technology. To compete in the disk drive market, Seagate must deliver faster time-to-market across a broad product line while investing nearly $150 million per year in new product and technology development.

At TOC World^® 2000 Seagate discussed their experiences utilizing Critical Chain Multi-Project management to manage their complex project management environments, including the launch of the first 15,000 RPM drive five weeks ahead of schedule. This "time-to-market coup" generated additional incremental revenue of $11m with $5m in additional profit.

Now see how Seagate is leveraging that experience to expand the implementation of critical chain across the continuum of their development chain to begin engaging Seagate's entire organization in Critical Chain based pipeline and portfolio management.

Specific topics of interest:

• Project Management as one link in the product development chain
• What are Pipeline and Portfolio Management? How do they differ from project management, and where do they fit into an enterprise's development chain
• The cultural and behavioral issues, implementation obstacles, and upper management issues inherent in this type of endeavor which much be understood and overcome to achieve success
• The challenges of deploying something of this scope across an organization of thousands of resources in geographically distributed locations across the United States and Asia
• Metrics and reports developed as well as results achieved by Seagate in rolling this out to all functions of this multi-billion dollar privately held company
• A look into the active deployment of pipeline management utilizing Critical Chain in a large, complex NPD organization

JLA-10 - Fairchild Semiconductor

Presenter: John Benjamin, Engineering Leader

First as Harris Semiconductor, then Intersil, and now Fairchild Semiconductor, the Mountaintop Semiconductor organization has utilized the Theory of Constraints as a management approach to constantly improve itself to deliver high value to its customers. Mountaintop has a unique history of integrating TOC and TPM (Total Productive Maintenance), rapid changeover techniques, process capability techniques, error proofing, etcetera, to focus on the correct constraints - thus leveraging improvement efforts that really deliver bottom line value. Instead of appearing to follow "a program of the month" process, their culture thrives on integration and valuing of techniques focused at the correct places. This includes designing constraints in when building, expanding, or combining manufacturing facilities and managing the project constraints to take advantage of those improvements as soon as possible.

The key takeaways of this story are:

1. Creating of culture of improvement by focusing on constraints
2. How to avoid the "program of the month" syndrome
3. Sustaining improvement during company changes