All in event report
A second set of observations from the TOCICO 2021 conference - quick thoughts on talks from Henry Camp, Philip Marris, Graham Scott, Boaz Ronen, and Rob Newbold.
The 2021 edition of the TOCICO (Theory of Constraints International Certification Organization) annual conference was held online last week. Here are some observations from the talks I was able to attend - I might have some more on reviewing archived videos.
The TOCICO hosted an online Critical Chain 2020 conference this week. As it seems most online conferences are running, the talks themselves were pre-recorded and the speakers were available in chat during their talk, and this conference had live Q&A immediately following each speaker. This made for fewer talks overall, but good opportunity to learn a bit more from the presenters and other attendees. Examples in the conference ranged across multiple industries (aerospace, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, etc) and application areas (manufacturing, product development, information technology, etc.)
I had the great pleasure of attending the 2020 DevOps Enterprise Summit - Las Vegas Virtual last week. I share many common interests with the DevOps community through my interest in flow and continuous improvement. There were topics throughout the three days (and extended beyond the conference time, as the videos were available to watch later) that could be applied anywhere, which is why I was participating. Looking through my notes, here are some items that sparked interest and joy for me.
Final wrap-up from TOCICO, including the obligatory conversation about how to make TOC the way.
Henry Camp gave another interesting talk on "Gaining a Competitive Edge through Sufficiency - 10 Steps to Breakthrough Results". His focus this time was on the concepts from The Choice, which describes the necessary conditions for a successful life: Lots of chances, Toughness/willingness to recover from mistakes, and the Ability to collaborate with others.
Humberto Baptista led a thoughtful discussion on "The Elusive Nature of POOGI" (process of ongoing improvement). He had a lot of fun with the language and suggesting Eli Goldratt left more meaning between the lines.
Joe Cooper and Malcolm Neumeyer spoke about "Applying TOC to Enterprise Architecture: Gaining Focus". It was an education on EA and a nice view of the challenges they see in the discipline.
How do you think about embedding TOC and flow into everything you do? "Engineering Reality at WiseTech Global: Core Conflict – Friend or Foe?" from James Powell was a fun talk from someone who clearly enjoys the work he is doing.
The lunchtime keynote was "30 Years of Success: TOC & Throughput Improvement at GM" by Jeff Miller (GM) & Kevin Kohls.
Steel companies have been using TOC in a variety of formats for many years. The steel industry is even featured in the TOC Insights self-learning program that were created in the early 1990's. There were a couple talks at TOCICO from steel companies.
Yaniv Dinur presented some of the challenges experienced in work with a large engineering-to-order company, "Engineering to Order – engineering, procurement, and production in one flow."
The first official day of the TOCICO conference started with a keynote from Kaoru (John) Watanabe talking about the long history of TOC implementations at Hitachi, "Enterprise wide TOC Implementation at $83B Conglomerate."
First workshop of TOCICO18. I sat in on the Demand Driven: A Practical Workshop on The Strategy of Flow by Debra Smith - she's one of the long time experts on this topic from her experience creating the concepts of DDMRP and implementing with many clients.
Eli Schragenheim did a nice TOC ICO webinar the other day on the topic of buffers, "Time Buffers, Stock Buffers and Buffer Management – The Key Insights and Their Universal Use."
The second day of Building on Success 2017 conference was also loaded with great hallway conversations and interesting presentations
At the Building on Success 2017 conference, Alex Knight spoke on fixing the healthcare system through the Theory of Constraints lens, mostly as described in his book Pride and Joy (my review), which tells the semi-fictional story of a significant turnaround at a hospital in the UK.
Gene Kim gave a great plenary at the Building on Success 2017 conference that described how TOC and related thinking can create truly breakthrough operations for technology.
Some highlights from the first day at Building on Success 2017. Focus, Full Kit and more.
"This stuff works!" from Retired Lt. General Andrew Busch in summarizing his 12 years in leadership positions and using Theory of Constraints to create significant improvements in his work. His summary included many things that Kris Cox listed in her 7 Essentials