Some highlights from the first day at Building on Success 2017.
"I have become the IT guy who thinks of technology last." Yazdi Bagli, VP in Global Business Services at P&G, talking about using the TOC thinking tools to help define the problem first. He also shared his story of coming into using more and more TOC in his business, suggesting he would probably start with the thinking processes if he had to do it all over again.
A team from a couple Utah agencies talked about constraints in their organizations - finding those constraints and then improving the system around those constraints. One element of the conversation around finding the constraint is the Blue Light story - it is a nice framing around how to find the key value adding activity in an operation. I use it quite frequently, along with the What Good Looks Like question, to help with the focus question.
Thomas Hoffman of Lufthansa Technik owns an engine maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO). He described ongoing work he is doing at improving the flow of work to provide excellent service to their customers. One interesting element was a great drawing of multiple vicious cycles in the way they operated. The solution involved using WIP control and Full Kit management - famiiiar solution elements across many of the presentations.
Charles Toups of Boeing described a number of initiatives where he has implemented TOC-related approaches from product development to R&D. His biggest observation was that his approach has gotten simpler over time, instead of the typical accretion of complexity. The simplest, deepest thing he has discovered: Use full kit deeply.
What is full kit? It has come up a lot at the conference. Simply: Full Kit is everything we need to successfully complete an activity (task, project phase, assembly, etc, etc.) without getting stuck once it has started. Lack of full kit is a major source of multitasking and the need for additional attention and supervision. Full Kit isn't simply a checklist - it is also a management approach that causes organizations to not release when there will clearly be problems. Charles Toups described a survey he did on task level touch time to schedule time: He found very low actual value added time (10-26%) with most of that being blamed on missing full kit.
This is from the Building on Success 2017 conference, presented by the Utah Office of Management and Budget and Goldratt Consulting. (I've been working with Goldratt Consulting for several years, so my conference fee has been covered.) The overall theme is "Breakthrough results for business and government."