Conflict Resolution

Presented by Oded Cohen, Partner - AGI

Do you feel that people are our real assets, and yet human relationships can cause a major roadblock to management's quest for continuous improvement?

Do you feel that your day is filled with endless fights between departments? Does your sales department fight your production department, who hasn't delivered what they've promised, on time and in full?

Does everybody blame top management for not setting an example, and being nonsupportive of initiatives?

Do you find that problems usually start with simple conflicts between individuals who represent different views and interests, and that when simple conflicts are not resolved, they deteriorate to chronic conflicts that create major stumbling blocks to progress?

If you've ever felt this way, then this is a workshop you should experience! The TOC methodology will help you understand conflicts between individuals and provide a way out - laying the foundation for the concept of win-win.

The session will cover the three aspects of change - the problem, the breakthrough solution and some of the practicalities of making it happen. The participants will have the opportunity to check the process on a simple conflict from their reality (work, home or environment).

Constructive Criticism

Presented by Bob Jacob, General Manager - AGI Spearhead 3

In this workshop, participants will learn how to identify and overcome the dreaded negative side effects -- perceived or real, which so often derails great new ideas. Far too often great ideas never have the opportunity to prove themselves, because of the resistance they create when presented.

Using actual case studies, and their own hands-on experience, this workshop enables participants to understand the fears that are often associated with implementing new ideas. Participants will develop the necessary steps to prevent their fears from becoming realized, without undercutting the power of their new ideas.

Deciding on TOC

Presented by Kath Leishman, Partner - AGI (Tuesday and Wednesday sessions)
Presented by Dr. Alex Klarman, Partner - AGI (Thursday and Friday sessions)

What to change? What is the core problem?
Every executive is convinced that the only prudent way to manage an organization is to never lose sight of the global picture. Unfortunately, almost all executives are also convinced that this is the way they are currently managing their organizations. The first hour of this presentation is devoted to not only confirm that this is not the case, but to clearly demonstrate the erroneous beliefs that block executives from managing according to their intuition.

What to change to? What is the solution?
Everyone who has come across TOC is aware of its foundation of strong logic and common-sense solutions in areas like production, project management and marketing. You may even be familiar with some of these solutions from reading Dr. Goldratt's best-selling books; The Goal, It's Not Luck and Critical Chain or having seen The Goldratt Satellite Program. As this conference has a multitude of educational sessions designed to expand or round out your knowledge of TOC based solutions, this presentation will focus on the answer to the next and most crucial question!

How to cause the change?
In the last 20 years, a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience has been gained from TOC implementations in thousands of organizations. It has been proven that the major obstacles standing in the way of proper implementations have no relation to the type of industry to which an organization belongs, to its economic environment, or even to its size. These major obstacles have one thing in common: they are all human-related obstacles. Identifying these obstacles and successfully overcoming each of them is the essence of this presentation. You will obtain a full understanding of how to embark on a smooth and successful implementation of an enterprise-wide management approach.

Decision Making - Finance & Measurements

Presented by Hugh Cole, Executive Director - AGI

Everyone knows that people tend to behave in line with the way they are measured. If we want the decisions and actions taken at a local level to provide a clear, concise bottom line effect, then we need be able to properly bridge between the bottom line measurements (the profit and loss statement and the balance sheet) and the local measurements (efficiencies, pay-back period, product cost, etc.). While Cost Accounting based measurements are often used to bridge this gap, the effects can be devastating when viewed from a holistic perspective. The damage is seldom restricted to just the shop floor - it is even more profound in marketing, sales and engineering. So what is the sensible financial approach, which bridges the gap between the bottom line and the local measurements with regard to decisions dealing with…

• P&L (Valuing Inventory)
• Investing in additional equipment
• Making products/parts in-house vs. Buying Outside
• Supporting process improvement and other quality initiatives
• Pricing products as they move inter-company
• Accepting orders / proposals with varying pricing and delivery expectations
• Staffing the organizations operations, etc, etc.

Success is dependent upon making good decisions.

In this three-hour session we will explore the fundamentals of decision-making in a TOC environment. Using interactive exercises and examples, the participants will discover how the above issues, as well as others, are addressed when an organization is managed from a holistic perspective. See how what are believed to be very complex issues become amazingly straightforward when the proper perspective is the foundation. You may find some surprising answers!

Marketing

Presented by Dale Houle, General Partner - AGI

"Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals." -- American Marketing Association's Definition of Marketing

What to change? What is the core problem that keeps companies from doing a better job marketing?
The key concept in marketing is facilitating exchanges that satisfy the customer's wants and needs while meeting the supplier's goals. In addition to understanding the customer's wants and needs, it is essential that we be able to clearly establish the value of satisfying those wants and needs. On one hand, customers are generally seeking solutions to their problems, they will most likely relate the value that they associate with a product or service to the benefits they expect to get from acquiring that product or service. On the other hand, suppliers are usually more concerned with the efforts they will have to put forth in order to actually provide a product or service and often attempt to value their product or service on the basis of those efforts. It is in fact this conflict between the customer's perception of value, which is based on expected benefits, and the supplier's perception of value, which is based on expected efforts, that marketing must resolve.

What to change to? What is the solution?
Resolving this conflict centers around marketing's ability to increase the customer's perception of value for what the supplier has to offer as a solution. One way of bringing about a change in the customer's perception of value for a product or service is to promote that product or service. While promotions can certainly spark a customer's interest, their overall effectiveness is usually quite limited in that they generally carry some form of price reduction and are easily copied by the competition. This means that marketing must not only endeavor to increase the customer's perception of value for what the supplier has to offer as a solution, but that they must do it in a way that the competitors cannot quickly copy. These kinds of market offers can only be created through innovation, either in technology or in organizational management. Innovations in organizational management generally result from changes in long-standing, industry wide policies, that once changed, enable a significant improvement in the satisfaction of customer wants and needs and the achievement of supplier goals. Not only can changes in supplier policy have a significant effect on the customer's perception of value, but they can also make it much more difficult for the competitors to easily copy.

How to cause the change? How to implement? As one would expect, implementing changes in supplier policies, in order to create a more beneficial solution for the customers puts the burden of change on the supplier rather than the customer. The burden of change can be especially large when innovative market offers require changes in a supplier's policies that are not currently viewed as detrimental, in fact they may even be viewed by some in the organization as being beneficial. While some of the obstacles to change will be technical in nature there will undoubtedly be those related to getting the buy-in of the organization at various levels and across functions.

During this session you will obtain a full understanding of how to systematically create an innovative business strategy (a high value market offer) that not only embodies the corporate strategy but one that can be also translated into a detailed operational strategy.

Overview of the Theory of Constraints

Presented by Dale Houle, General Partner - AGI

An Introduction to the Theory Of Constraints (TOC) -- the Theory of Constraints, via its five Step focusing process, its Thinking Processes and its proven logistical solutions, provides the framework for a full, cross-functional integration of an organization's capabilities into an Enterprise Wide Solution designed to deliver bottom line (goal and necessary conditions) results by addressing the organization's constraints, thus positioning the organization to become a market leader through providing:

• Fast, Reliable Availability of its' Products/ Services, and
• Product/Service offerings that the market acknowledges clearly meet their needs.

The TOC logistical solutions are well defined, proven solutions to manage production, distribution and project environments, centered on a constraining physical resource or set of resources. When properly applied they provide the template or foundation for an organization to create a customized solution, tailored to fit a specific environment. Implementation of any of the logistical solutions requires an adjustment in what information is collected and how it is used to make decisions around all aspects of investment, staffing, marketing and compensation incentive plans. An additional solution necessary to compliment all logistical solutions includes the re-engineering of accounting information used to make management decisions.

The TOC Thinking Processes can be broken into two basic categories, strategic thinking tools and tactical thinking tools. The strategic thinking tools provide the framework for an organization to create breakthrough solutions by identifying and solving the non-physical constraints (policies, measures, beliefs and work practices) that block an organization from improvement or implementation of the logistical solutions. The strategic tools are also used to define the direction of major initiatives, including innovative, high-value market offers and even the direction of the organization itself. The tactical tools are designed to allow the organization to quickly resolve conflict and create solutions in the "day to day" operating environment. They enable a company to effectively address the common causes responsible for the repetitive "fires" that consume so much valuable time. The tools are specifically designed to provide the necessary communication to initiate conflict resolution, empower actions to subordinate to and exploit the constraining resources, identify resource contention across functions and align and focus improvements. They are extremely powerful when used in combination with the logistical solutions and a key component to creating a new culture centered on "win-win" conflict resolution and problem solving.

Production

Presented by Gerry Hoffman, Certified Associate - AGI

Whether you are involved in a manufacturing, collection or assembly industry, or in the service or paper flow industries, this 3-Hour Production program will bring new insights to those involved in repetitive production activities.

For those unfamiliar with TOC's production solution, this session describes one element of TOC's holistic approach to managing an organization.

What to change? What's wrong with the system?

• A clearer understanding of common production problems and why they exist.
• Typical production beliefs and why they're incorrect.
• Efficiencies and batches, good or bad?

What to change to? What will right the ship and not cause new devastating problems?

• The simplicity of the generic TOC solution, called Drum-Buffer-Rope and Buffer Management.
• How it enables us to manage without worrying about every bit of down time.
• Its ability to separate the critical few from the important many.
• The safety nets to ensure the solution isn't worse than the disease.

How to cause the change? How do we convince others to commit to our vision?

• Resistance to change
• The ways resistance presents itself.
• How to overcome it, thereby enabling implementation.
• Technical issues and how they're handled.

For those already familiar with DBR and Buffer Management, come and learn the new approach to implementation!

Project Management

Presented by Dee Bradbury Jacob, Partner - AGI

From the beginning of time, organizations have struggled with bringing projects in on time, within budget and with full content. In the 1950's, the Critical Path and PERT Methodology created a breakthrough in project performance in delivering sorely needed Cold War technologies. As they translated to the business world, organizations began to make strides in project performance. The development of software technology for scheduling and tracking projects aided this effort. But, the internal and global environments weren't standing still. Project content was growing more complex, leading to more complex schedules. The demands for faster delivery of these more complex projects seemed to be on an exponential curve. Thus, today, we find ourselves with some of the same difficulties of the early project managers, in spite of the benefits of PERT/CPM and software:

How to bring this project and every other project in on time, within budget, and with full content?

This stimulating three hour workshop introduces you in detail to the break out solution of Project Management the TOC Way for Multi-Project Environments. Based on analysis modified through many successful implementations, this workshop picks up where the book Critical Chain ends - what to do in the Multi-Project environment. By briefly exploring the root causes driving today's problems and showing their impact on the problems project managers and organizations have today through computer simulation; the participant begins to see the direction their project or organization must address to achieve break out performance. The participant then goes more in depth to the solution for the root causes, again exploring how each part of the solution assists in improving performance significantly. This session includes a hands on multi-project scheduling exercise as a basis for reviewing the robustness of the solution for gaining more effective utilization of existing resource capability. The participant is then taken through the most important element of success - how to implement a logistical and cultural change quickly in their organization through a Six Phased approach that addresses proactively the ever present obstacle of resistance to change. The session ends with answering the most important question of how does an organization capitalize on this success to leverage its market and not let other parts of the organization constrain its success.

Sales & Buy-In

Presented by Hugh Cole, Executive Director - AGI

Whether you interface more with the world outside of your organization or you are more involved with internal operations, the need to achieve buy-in is critical for success. Most of us have experienced the frustration of putting forth a great idea and, despite our best personal efforts, been unable to somehow convince necessary parties to join in.

By utilizing TOC, it is possible to structure and follow a buy-in process that is both intuitive and effective. This structure fundamentally follows the manner by which people tend to evaluate new thoughts or ideas. Its use is equally valuable whether the objective is to achieve sales to outside clients or buy-in from internal associates.

This three-hour session will explain the process. Using real examples and participant interaction, attendees will see how the TOC application to Sales and Buy-In may be used to help individuals and organizations progress in their sales efforts.

Strategy to Tactics

Presented by Tracey Burton-Houle, Partner - AGI

If you're at all familiar with the Theory of Constraints (TOC), you know that for an organization to effectively and efficiently achieve its goal now and in the future, all of its parts must be aligned and working in synchrony towards the organization's goal - from the boardroom to the frontlines. The question is "how do we do it?!"

Organizations know from experience that planning - whether you're talking about corporate strategic planning, business planning, or operations planning - cannot be done in isolation. We've seen the failure of the corporate visions, missions and strategies that were "hurled over the wall" for the rest of the organization to "make happen, or else…!" We've struggled and fought to meet the marketing and sales plans that were derived from statistics, forecasting or some commitment to the corporate's expected growth rate rather than plans founded on solid logic of how to dramatically increase the markets' perception of value for our offerings. And we'll never see the results promised by the operational plans built by each department going off by itself to determine just how it's going to improve its local productivity and costs in isolation. As long as our planning fails to acknowledge the interconnectedness of all its parts in a single system, we will never get the results we want… or promise.

In an ideal world, how should an organization plan? The executive team would develop a corporate strategy that would chart the course the organization will take to ensure its future success. Marketing would then translate the corporate strategy into a business plan that identifies the specific markets that the organization will go after and what those markets' deep, unmet needs are. From those needs, marketing would then craft offerings that are undeniably valuable in the eyes of the market. Finally, the business plan and offerings provide the necessary input to develop an operations plan that would enable the organization to deliver what's offered to the customer, when the customer wants it. In general, the planning process would resemble a waterfall, beginning with the global perspective and objectives and trickling down throughout the organization until those at the front lines have determined what procedures and actions they will employ to fulfill their unique and specific function in the organization.

Although strategies would be planned top down, how are they implemented? From the bottom up, beginning with the operations plan. The objectives of the strategic plan are met when the tactics of the operations and business plans are fully in effect in reality.

In this session we will demonstrate how the TOC Thinking Processes can be used to take an organization from the concept of its vision and mission, through the strategic, business and operational planning processes, all the way down to the tactical actions to be taken on the "frontlines." By incorporating TOC's Six Phases of Consensus into each step of the waterfall planning process, consensus, active collaboration and a mindset of ongoing improvement permeates the culture of the organization.

Supply Chain Management

Presented by Dr. Donn J. Novotny, Partner - AGI

The Theory of Constraints is based on the assumption that every organization has a constraint, something that prevents the organization from doing better, or moving closer to its goal.

Organizations can also be viewed as a chain, with the links described as the dependencies of the various departments or functions in converting raw material into finished goods. In a more global sense, the supply chain can be portrayed as a chain with the links described as supplier, manufacturer, regional warehouse, distributor, retailer and the customer. This workshop illustrates and logically shows how the strategic and tactical solutions, developed by AGI, can be applied to resolve virtually any constraints that are prohibiting enhanced performance with the chain.

The five steps of Constraint Management are derived to show how logistical constraints related to flow can be vigorously addressed and resolved. This workshop will show how these five steps are inherent in the Production and Project Management tactical solutions.

Eventually it becomes clear how the identity of constraints change from physical to non-physical, from internal to external. In the chain example, the constraints "moved" from one link to another, from physical to the non-physical (invisible) constraints of rules, policies, training and measurements. In this case, the five steps of Constraint Management can no longer be applied. In fact, two of the steps are no longer relevant.

A thinking process to address the three remaining steps has been developed which manifests itself into five powerful techniques that can identify and resolve the invisible constraints of an organization. Specific examples relative to Sales and Marketing, Distribution, Human Behavior and Measurements are presented to demonstrate the applicability of these techniques.

This session concludes by showing that the concepts behind the Theory of Constraints, together with the strategic and tactical solutions developed by AGI, can provide a solid foundation that can be used for effective decision making throughout the organization and enhance the performance of the supply chain.

Team Building

Presented by Henning du Preez, Partner - AGI

The demands upon us are constantly increasing, tasks become more complex, and timing and coordination become more and more important. The only way to really be successful is through collaboration -- through successful team efforts.

Sometimes we wish we could freely choose the members of the team, but this is not usually the case. People are selected for the team based on their expertise and availability and are pulled from the same, relatively small, pools of resources. Therefore they usually bring with them their preconceived opinions about each other and their private agendas.

This workshop will enhance your ability to convert a group, which is supposed to be a team, into a motivated close-knit crew, operating with a clear strategy and organized tactics!