DW: How has your use of TOC concepts changed over the years?
KK: What we found when we first started out is that we were dealing with the low-hanging fruit. You look at that first example I told you about, and it was very obvious that the office was in the way, and the solution was just to move it. Over time, the solutions to the problems have become a lot more difficult to find. This doesn't mean you can't solve them, it just means you might have to use more scientific tech- niques. Now I might have to apply statistical methods as opposed to simple observation to understand what's driving the problem at a work station.
Another thing we're doing lately is applying what we've learned from The Goal to the design of new plants and production lines. In -effect, we're solving problems before they arise. Eli Goldratt hasn't spent a lot of time talking about using TOC in that way, but we've taken his concepts and adopted them to our needs. That's been the beauty of it for me. If you understand the logic and the reason behind the methodology, then you can apply that stuff continuously.
DW: It's interesting that a way of thinking about production problems that you found useful 15 years ago you still find useful today. Does that surprise you?
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KK: Yes and no. The Theory of Constraints is a very scientific, logical process. And because of that, when the game changes you can always go back to the logic. Originally we just had to find the bottleneck, walk out there, ask three or four questions, and we knew what to go and do. Now we can change the way we design whole manufactur- ing processes to make sure they're better from the start. But the logic behind TO C-the conflict clouds, the current reality trees, the way we ask questions to uncover the constraint-all that still applies.
I think the problem with too many other approaches is that once the first layer of problems goes away, and the crisis no longer exists, then it's, "Phew! We're done!" In the TOC world, you find yourself asking, "Where has the constraint gone, and what can I do to help break it?" So you're never done.
I'd like to be able to tell you that as soon as I started telling people about these concepts, the whole organization immediately changed to the new paradigm. The fact is that it has taken years to get the process going, and the leverage to make improvements is still significant, es- pecially in a company as large as General Motors. It's much like the flywheel concept discussed in Good to Great, by Jim Collins. It's taken a while to get the flywheel turning, but it's starting to go at a pretty good clip right now!
Interview with Eli Goldratt continued...
DW: At Dow Corning it took about 5 years for TOC to spread from one section to a whole business unit In General Motors it took over ten years to be institutionalized throughout North America. Does it always take years to spread from the origin to the whole company?
EG: Not necessarily. It depends on who took the initiative. If the ini- tiative was taken by a middle level manager, it naturally takes much longer compared to the many cases where the initiative was taken by a top manager. What is amazing is that the complexity of the organiza- tion is playing almost no role. In very large and complex organizations it takes TOC about the same time to become the dominant culture as it takes in small, relatively simple organizations.
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DW: Can you give an example?
EG: In order to prove my point let's take an extreme example. An example of an operation that is not only large and complex but also dominated by large uncertainties - a repair depot of the United States Marine Corps. This depot is overhauling helicopters. It's very large - several thousand people. It is very complex - the helicopters are disassembled to the smallest pieces. Even the paint is sandblasted off. Whatever has to be repaired is repaired. Whatever has to be replaced is replaced. And then you reassemble the whole airplane. One has to make sure that certain parts which were taken from the original airplane go back on the same airplane. What makes it even more complex is the fact that two intrinsically different modes of operation have to be synchronized. The disassembly/assembly lines are a multi-project environment. The repair shops that feed the lines are a production environment, and the two must work in tandem. The real challenge is the fact that the whole operation is dominated by high uncertainty - one doesn't know the content of the work until the helicopter is disassembled and inspected. Surprises all over the place. A real nightmare. Still, it took the commander less than a year to implement TOC. An implementation that was so solid that the process of on-going improvement continues with his successors.
Interview with Robert Leavitt, Colonel, United States Marine Corps retired.
Manager, Sierra Management Technologies
DW: You were responsible for implementing a TOC-based program in the Marine Corps?
RL: Yes, when I was commanding officer at the Naval Air Depot in Cherry Point, North Carolina. I started the implementation there, which they have continued. As a colonel I had in essence a $625 million company and 4,000 people working for me. Everybody says the government is always the last to get the message. I don't know if that's true. My personal belief is that the government gives guys like me the opportunity to try things a little differently.
DW: Tell us about your implementation.
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RL: We had problems delivering H-46s on time. The H-46 is a 25-to 30-year-old Boeing helicopter used extensively in the Marine Corps as part of their assault support role. Because the airplane is so old and in frequent need of maintenance, anything over a single-digit number of airplanes on our hangar deck meant that you took a shadow off the flightline. If you took a shadow off the flightline, that meant they didn't have an airplane to do their mission. Our negotiated norm for turnaround time was 130 days, and on average we were somewhere between 190 and 205 days.
DW: Sounds like you had a problem.
RL: A problem, yes. So we implemented critical chain, and ultimately cut the number of airplanes in flow from 28 to 14. We were able to sell that to our customers. And the turnaround time went from 200 days to about 135. Now that in and of itself is probably a significant improvement. But at the same time we were starting the process, they added 30 days more worth of corrosion work to be done to the cabin. We accommodated the 30 days within that 135-day delivery. So we went from what would have been about 230 or 240 days to 135.
DW: Why did this approach work where others had failed?
RL: We had looked at a lot of the project management solutions, including material resource planning (MRP). TOC was the one that worked from all dimensions; building teamwork, understanding vari- ability, and with a grounding in scientific thought. It was a holistic approach to solving the problems. It looked at the entire system and said, hey, once you find the key leverage point you'll get some sig- nificant returns. And then you can go back and find the next leverage point, or constraint.