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White Papers
The Theory of Constraints and its Thinking Processes: A Brief Introduction to TOC
From the Introduction: Today, more than ever, change is essential to satisfying expectations. Customers
expect higher product and service quality than the price they’re
willing to pay to acquire those products and services. More than ever,
employees expect security in their jobs. Shareholders expect that today’s
investments will yield a higher rate of return over a shorter timeframe. Yet,
“to make ends meet,” management is constantly pressured to keep costs
under control.
In light of today’s competitive pressures and a rapidly changing environment,
to not change is to give way to one’s competitors. Hence, we should understand
that to improve means to change.
Combining Lean Six Sigma and TOC
From the Introduction:
As global competition continues to grow, the pressure to improve becomes more and more intense.
Executives and managers face many challenges: increase sales, reduce cost, reduce inventory,
accurately forecast future demand, find the next market breakthrough, and most of all
Survive! Although there are many ways to improve, many organizations have invested in at
least one of the three most widespread methods of improvement ‐ Theory of Constraints (TOC),
Lean or Six Sigma. In most cases, company experts have spent significant time mastering one of
these three and spend time trying to show returns from their investment. As other methodologies
came along, pressures to shift to using something else came across as another program of
the month. But for many, when the objective for all three is to improve the organization’s performance,
why did it come down to an “either‐or” mentality? Why did some attempts at integrating
the three not show the promised returns or end up being integrated in name only?
Some of the reasons appear to be:
- The methodologies were viewed as “tools in a tool box”, where each tool was perceived
as best for particular uses.
- Expertise in all methodologies was not available making true integration impossible.
- An effective integration process for the three methodologies was not developed.
Our purpose is to show how to effectively integrate these methodologies, but let’s first provide
a short overview of each of them.
Project Management in a Lean World - Translating Lean Six Sigma (LSS) into the Project Environment
Excerpt:
What is the Project Environment's Point of View to
Being Leaned
As the Lean Six Sigma efforts broadened into the project environment there was less than an
enthusiastic greeting. Most project managers and resource managers felt that they were already
working in a pretty lean world ‐ lean on resources,
lean on time, and lean on funding! Many
project managers felt that they were already asked
to do the near impossible ‐ sit on top of an elephant
balancing on a ball on a high wire twenty feet in the
air without a net.
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