The 2021 edition of the TOCICO (Theory of Constraints International Certification Organization) annual conference was held online last week in a now-familiar setup. The speakers pre-recorded their presentations and then were available for live conversation after the stream of the presentation. And depending on your registration, it’s possible to catch up on presentations you’ve missed (which I’m doing this week). Here are some highlights from the sessions I caught so far.
Vicky Mabin gave the opening presentation, talking about “Extending TOC's Reach, Using TOC with other approaches.” She provided examples of projects that have used TOC and also incorporated other approaches like linear programming (optimization), stakeholder mapping, systems dynamics, etc. In her summary, she talked about how all of these models of human systems can be useful - referencing the classic “All models are wrong. Some are useful” quote from George Box. I also liked the quote attributed to Michael Rothkopf that models aren’t an end in themselves, but a prompt for further thinking. Vicky was also presented with a lifetime achievement award by Jeff Cox (coauthor of The Goal), which was quite nice.
A few other presentations took on this topic of TOC plus other methodologies - or more generally on the value of branching out from one’s center (Roy Stratton and John Willis amongst others). It’s not exactly a new thing - all of TOC is built on the shoulders of other approaches. And I haven’t been on a “TOC” project yet where additional methods and thinking weren’t valuable additions. But sometimes the TOC community gets a little too focused on TOC-only. It’s all about generating more flow to value.
Lisa Scheinkopf had an interesting take on bringing the personal into a practice with “Feelings Shmeelings: Using What You Sense and Feel to Think More Clearly.” What happens when significant breakthroughs are blocked by something internal - by the fear that is inevitable when challenging deeply held assumptions or even worldviews? Fear causes us to avoid … avoid starting, avoid rigor, avoid acting (on what seems “obvious”). At some point we need to find the courage to face the fear. This topic seems to ring true for more and more people, even at TOCICO, as there have been conversations along these lines at the conference over the past few years.
Sanjeev Gupta talked about “Flow Based Scheduling: Mining the hidden gold in complex operations.” He always has some interesting comments as he continues to pursue improvements in flow. His primary interests are in project environments, but his comments in the talk applied to any flow - projects, manufacturing, supply chain, sales, etc. Essentially, the conversation is that we often fall in love with complicated and complex “solutions” to challenges that arise in our environments. But in order to gain flow, we don’t need those complicated solutions. We need to know where to focus and how to improve flow.
The “buffers” that are a standard tool within TOC implementations are often stated as “protection from Murphy”, but Sanjeev took this a different direction. Buffers aren’t there for Murphy, buffers are there to absorb queues when they occur. And we monitor the state of those buffers to know when to respond - to know when those queues are becoming too large or too often for the needs of enabling flow in the system.
Ray Immelman used a story from his experience to discuss “How to really do TOC successfully: A ten-year case study.” He emphasized that there is a fundamental conflict in traditionally-organized companies: they are organized around functional and process efficiency. But those functions and processes don’t generate flow and income for the company. Profits come from the way the system operates together - but the traditional efficiency measures assume the individual processes and functions will “add up” to a full system efficiency. It just doesn’t happen. This is the bane of systems thinkers everywhere: local efficiency kills system effectiveness. In these organizations, management attention is consumed in dealing with the conflicts generated by all the noise at the interactions between functions and processes. Ray’s overall statement is that we have to move from the local efficiency view to an overall system effectiveness view.