Project Management

Multi-Project Synchronization
The Key to Multi-Project Management
Having trouble prioritizing between projects? Are delays in one project cascading into other projects? Are you having trouble understanding how delaying the start of a new project or freezing one already underway could actually help them finish sooner? Are you impacted by projects that drop in and disrupt your existing project commitments?

Come check out this session on Multi-Project Synchronization and work through hands-on experiments demonstrating the theory being presented. See how to apply Critical Chain Project Management in the Multi-Project environment of shared resources and cascading problems. This session will cover:

• Critical Chain Scheduling
• Synchronization
• The use of capacity buffers

Attendees should have either read the book Critcal Chain or attended an Introductory Session on TOC Project Management.

Advanced Network Building
Often heralded as the first major breakthrough in the course of implementing TOC Multi Project Management.

A project is a series of tasks with interdependency relationships which, when accomplished, achieves the objectives of the project. To the extent that the series of tasks and the subsequent interdependencies are accurate and understandable, the project will deliver a quality product.

Unlike most current processes today, network building based on the Theory of Constraints begins with the end in view. With a clear understanding of the objective and deliverables of a given project, the project plan "network" is built based on necessity. The end result is a finely tuned plan with far fewer missed dependencies, unnecessary tasks, and sequential tasks which, based on necessity, could have been accomplished in parallel.

Come learn and practice the 12 steps to building a project plan that will provide more information, capture more details, and set up project scheduling in a way program and project managers can really use.

TOC Project Management Operational Metrics
In order to be effective, project managers need to avoid three common mistakes:

1. Delaying recovery actions until they are too late to provide sufficient help,
2. Taking recovery actions before they are truly necessary (and thereby introducing project variability that would not otherwise exist), and
3. Taking recovery actions that are either incorrect for the situation or are taken in the wrong place (in areas of the project that will not really improve the outcome).

These risks are not independent of each other. For example, creating a system that minimizes the chance of taking recovery actions too late may, at the same time, increase the risk of taking recovery actions too early. AGI's TOC Project Management operating principles strive to strike a balance between these three elements, enabling project managers to act at the appropriate time in the appropriate way.

This session provides a comprehensive look at Buffer Management and other project tracking techniques. Discussions include the monitoring of project buffers relative to Critical Chain consumption and, for situations where variability is not linear across time, how to construct and use graphical models of predicted buffer consumption.

TOC Project Management in a Traditional EVMS Environment
TOC Project Management was created to achieve breakthrough success by delivering projects on time, within budget, and with the promised content intact. It was also created to help reduce project cycle time and cost, while increasing an organization's capacity for project work. In order to accomplish these objectives, it is essential to make some logistical and cultural changes away from traditional project management practices.

EVMS (Earned Value Management Systems) is one of the more widespread approaches to project management. It was created as a tool to provide managers insight regarding adherence to schedule, budget, and, to a lesser extent, content. It is rich with metrics that report project progress and signal the need for management intervention.

This session addresses some frequently asked questions such as: How can we implement TOC Project Management in an operational environment where EVMS is thoroughly ingrained in the culture? What are the most important things we need to consider when making such a change? How should we communicate with managers and customers who are used to seeing EVMS metrics? And at what level can or should these two methodologies co-exist?

Strategic Planning

Overview of TOC for Strategic Planning
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. Yet, how do our organizations do their planning?

We've seen the failure of corporate visions, missions and strategies that are "thrown over the wall" for the rest of the organization to "make it happen…or else!" We've struggled - often unsuccessfully - to meet marketing and sales plans that were derived from statistics, forecasting or simply wishful thinking rather than founded on solid logic of exactly how to increase the markets' perception of value for our offerings. And we've rarely seen the results promised by operational plans that were built by individual departments in isolation of other departments. As long as our planning fails to acknowledge the inherent interconnectedness of all of an organization's parts, our organizations will never achieve the results wanted…or promised!

In this session, a process will be presented for devising and deploying integrated strategic plans that quickly synchronize all levels and functions of an organization around achieving its common goal. This process relies on the systematic, but selectively rigorous, facilitation of the TOC Thinking Processes (TP) and Six Steps of Consensus, resulting in a plan that everyone in the organization is committed to making a success. Finally, to ensure proper implementation, the resulting plan is converted into a project plan that is scheduled and managed using Critical Chain Project Management.

Setting the Direction of the Company
Improving the Performance of the Supply Chain
If your organization is not reaching maximum operating profits, then something is blocking it from improving. These obstacles to improvement are called CONSTRAINTS. By focusing on constraints as a total organizational issue rather than a local (departmental) issue, you can drastically improve the efficiency of your entire operation.

Using the Theory of Constraints the Goldratt Institute has carefully analyzed company direction-setting practices, especially through marketing and sales. Thousands of managers have seen examples, through Dr. Eli Goldratt’s bestsellers The Goal and It’s Not Luck, of how to tackle management issues in their department, in three straightforward steps:

• Knowing What to Change
• Knowing What Changes are Required
• Knowing How to Make the Changes Happen

The Theory of Constraints, which participants will be applying, is founded on the premise that today’s market situation is characterized by fierce competition, pressure on prices and global uncertainty. Overcoming your own operating constraints demands unprecedented partnering with suppliers, customers and employees. This seminar shows you how to overcome conflicts and constraints that occur in everyday business, and how to achieve a lasting solution.

This course shows you how to overcome your most difficult strategic planning challenges by teach you how to:

1. Identify Organizational Constraints
   Analyze your decision-making processes with regard to identifying your company’s constraints, product mix decisions, process improvement efforts, measurements and the resulting bottom line impact of each decision.

2. Systematically Remove Your Constraints
   Resolve long-standing conflicts between levels and functions, gaining complete buy-in.

3. Immunize the Future of Your Company
   Deal effectively with the competition, both for the short-term and long-term.

4. Strengthen Your Organizational Vision
   Resolve the conflicts between shareholders, the employees and the customers, regardless of the uncertainties in market demand.

5. Innovate and Problem Solve
   Amalgamate five powerful avenues of solution.

6. Accelerate Improvements
   Effective approaches to accelerate your ongoing improvement process.

Supply Chain

Overview of TOC for Supply Chains
There are many different types of supply chains for organizations to manage. No matter whether supply chains are small or large, internal or external, or in manufacturing, service, or distribution; they are difficult to manage due to statistical fluctuations and dependent events.

This two-part overview for Supply Chains lays out the fundamentals and practicalities of implementing the common sense approaches in Dr. Goldratt's books in an entertaining and interactive way. Covered are the the underlying root conflicts that lead to many of the problems of supply chains (both internal and external), such as:

• Due dates are often missed
• There is too much overtime
• Original plans have a very limited life
• Priorities are constantly shuffled
• It is difficult to respond to urgent customer orders
• There are frequent materials/parts shortages
• There is too much expediting
• Production lead times are too long
• Inventory levels too high
• In spite of high inventories, we're short of the inventory we need now
• Too many missed sales to the end user/consumer
• There are too many emergency shipments
• The amount of returned product is too high
• Too many orders are shipped incomplete

Strategic Placement of Constraints/Plant Design & Layout
If involved in manufacturing or any other data collection/assembly/dissemination activity, you know from experience that constraints exist. This 3-hour session is dedicated to the not as well known and even less practiced ability to design constraints into an environment.

Whether you are familiar or not with TOC's Production Solution, this session describes one element of TOC's holistic approach to managing an organization.

• Since every system has a constraint, how much control do we have over it?
  • How much control do we want over the constraint?
  • Should it respond to us or should we react to it?
• If we were creating a new plant (environment), how would we decide on the placement of the constraint?
  • Can we place a constraint anywhere we want it? SHOULD WE?
  • What criteria do we need to determine where a constraint should be?
    • Strategic value to the organization
    • Environmental decisions
    • Market influences
    • Ability to buffer
    • Technical issues
    • Human resource issues
    • Yield issues
      • Downtime
      • Quality problems
      • Maintenance
      • Murphy - What can go wrong will go wrong.
• How do we take this list into consideration when designing a constraint into the system (strategic placement)?
• What is the value of strategic placement of constraints versus allowing the constraint to naturally move?

If you have operated in the mode of reacting to your system constraint, this session will provide valuable insight and the opportunity to be more proactive in your approach to constraints management.

Sizing Replenishment Buffers
The Key to Buffer Management
Buffer Management provides the main power of the production and replenishment TOC applications. Appropriately sized and placed buffers is one of the necessary conditions for effective buffer management. But just what is the right size and where are the right locations?

In this session, participants will experience first hand how to locate and size buffers throughout the supply chain. They will understand the impact of this change on the bottom line. Through a combination of theory and hands on experiments, learn more about this important aspect of successful application of TOC in your environment. This session will cover:

• Replenishment
• Time Buffers
• 3- and 5-Zoned Buffers

"Jonah" Upgrade
For graduates of our "Jonah" training, and graduates of our 2, 3 or 4 week technical training and licensing programs

Lone "Jonahs"
Are you a Jonah and tirelessly advocating TOC -- but nobody is listening? Are you considered the "TOC Zealot" by your co-workers? Do you feel like you are moving two steps forward, but three steps back while trying to implement TOC in your organization? If you answer "yes" to any of these questions, then you qualify for the title of "Lone Jonah."

You don't have to stay in the ranks of the "Lone Jonah" forever. This round-table session will be hosted by several former "Lone Jonahs" - Jonahs who were able to find the key to moving TOC in their organization. They will share with you the challenges they faced and how they were able to successfully gain the buy-in to implement TOC. They will also answer questions from the audience on their experiences or particular obstacles you are facing in your own organization. Come and hear what they have to say -- perhaps you will find what you need to become a former "Lone Jonah."

Developing the Core Conflict Cloud
Let's admit it. For those "Jonahs" who have been around a while, building a Current Reality Tree used to be a real pain. Knowing where to stop digging for causes and trying to connect those seemingly disparate pieces of the tree to find a "core problem" often took considerable blood, sweat, and tears. A few years ago, this all changed with the introduction of the "three cloud process" and the Core Conflict Cloud, providing a far less painless approach to identifying "what to change." This session will provide a review of the process for developing the Core Conflict Cloud and offer helpful hints on using it.

The Jonah Reality - Problems and Opportunities in using TOC in your Company
There is a gap between the elegance of TOC-based solutions and the reality. While people who like TOC tend to believe that it is so simple and common sense - it tends to be that many other people in their organization cannot understand what they see in TOC. Years of experience in implementing TOC has led to the analysis that can help any Jonah and any person who has already decided to implement TOC or one of its applications in their environment. Learn from the experience of others and save yourself some potential obstacles that may slow down your implementation.

This session will also explore the Management Skills Workshop tools and the procedures to use these tools as the key to buy-in and collaboration, thus creating a win-win environment.

Quantifying Bottom Line Impact
We know that "every improvement is a change", but often wonder if the particular change under consideration is an improvement. One way to deal with that question is to determine just much impact an improvement will cause on an organization's bottom-line. The Theory of Constraints uses fundamental measurements to provide direction in our decision-making processes. Whether your interest is in selling ideas internally in your organization or externally to your market or suppliers, the understanding of how to determine value and use these measurements is an important and useful TOC skill.

This 90-minute session will provide examples and include individual participation in exercises to provide greater understanding in:

• Finding the areas of improvement that are of value to an organization
• Valuing the impact of internal improvements in your organization
• Determining the value of your products / services to your customer

Market Strategy

Defining the Initial Market Offer
Every market offer or "value proposition" has as it's beginning a search for where to focus. Is there a process that can guide us in our efforts? We know that customers buy based on value. If we can systematically find "sets" of customers who we can somehow bring verifiable value to, we have a place to start. A powerful value creator is the capability to solve someone's problems - the more problems that we can solve, the better.

The TOC Thinking Processes provide a logical approach to such an undertaking. This analysis phase is the first step in the creation of a market strategy. In this 90-minute session, we will introduce processes and discuss examples of:

• Identifying potential market segments
• Selecting segments that appear fruitful to pursue
• Analyzing the problems of a market segment - showing how the current market offers create them
• Developing a direction for a new market offer

Day to Day Problem Solving

Communication Skills - Tools for Day-to-Day Use
TOC is defined as the ability to construct and communicate common sense solutions. The core of its methodology is a communication tool called the cloud. It is a basic logical tool that enables one to understand a problem through seeing the conceptual conflict that prevents people or systems from finding or implementing a common sense solution. A great tool to know when dealing with personnel conflicts!

This session will demonstrate what the Cloud is and provide detailed instruction on how to use the TOC communication process to find real solutions. During this session participants will have the opportunity to practice analyzing simple day-to-day problems and use them to construct clouds and search for a solution that may be a breakthrough to a problem they’re currently having.

Team Building
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!

Finance & Measurements

TOC Decision Making: Financial Measurements
Mangers in most organizations look to the Finance group for help in measuring and judging critical business issues such as:

• Financial status of the system as a whole (P&L / Balance Sheet)
• Financial status of Profit Centers
• Investments in additional equipment
• Product Make / Buy decisions (outsourcing)
• Pricing products as they move inter-company
• Product profitability

It is well understood that business success is dependent upon making good decisions. But the decisions made are dependent upon the analysis, which in turn is dependent upon the underlying assumptions. If those assumptions are wrong, the impact can be devastating to the business.

In this 90-minute session we will compare how these judgments are made in a traditionally managed organization vs a TOC environment. The participants will discover how "very complex issues" become amazingly straightforward when the proper perspective is at the foundation. You may find some surprising answers!

TOC Decision Making: Operational Measurements
We know that overall organizational performance is actually an effect. It is a result of decisions and actions taken at local operational levels. We also know that people tend to behave in line with the way that they are measured. So, if our desire is to improve organizational bottom line results, we need to ensure that the local operational measurements promote the behaviors that will provide those results.

However, today most measurements directly associated with operations are focused on how we did. This is true whether we are measuring:

• How many did we produce,
• How complete is the project, or
• How are our shipments compared to request date (or to commit date)?

These answers are typically compared to some expected value (standard) and from that we measure how we have performed.

But how does this help? At best it can give us some guidance on what we need to improve in the future. The problem is that it doesn't really provide guidance on what we should do now.

This 90-minute session will overview real operational measurements and how the logistical solutions of TOC provide us with the means to make the correct operational decisions. The key is to make the right decisions there. The rest is just the outcome.