Critical Chain - Eliyahu M. Goldratt [32]
He smiles at me and says softly, "You have to cool down. I suggest you go and speak with Johnny Fisher. He can help you."
"Yeah, sure." The last thing I need is another lecture on the importance of optimization techniques.
"It's not what you think," he responds to my expression. "Johnny was on sabbatical last year, but not at another university. He spent the year at UniCo."
"And using his mathematical skills he pretended to save that conglomerate a fortune. Good for him."
"Will you please stop announcing your views on business professors," Jim laughs. "Johnny learned a new method there. Something that, I'm sure, you'll find fascinating. It's all about constructing logical procedures. Exactly what you are looking for. Analysis based on cause-effect relationships, resolutions based on conflicts between necessary conditions, structured common sense, no mathematics."
What is he talking about? I don't really care.
"You don't care, huh? No problem. Just make sure you're at the next faculty colloquium. Johnny is giving it."
Big deal.
Chapter 11
Rick is among the last to enter. To his surprise, the small auditorium is almost full. Probably the word went around that this colloquium was going to be different. Much different. Jim is waving at him. "I kept a seat for you." Now he won't be able to sneak out after fifteen minutes.
"Thanks."
He has just sat down when Johnny Fisher starts. "I was sitting here watching this auditorium fill up, and I was thinking to myself, all these people came to see me. How flattering. I'm a celebrity. Then I realized, the Ph.D. students are here because they have to be. The professors are here out of courtesy. And all our important guests from industry came, not because of me, but because of the title of my presentation. Well, that's life."
Rick joins the polite laughter.
Johnny leaves the podium and starts to pace the stage. "I was asked to talk about the new things I learned during my one-year sabbatical at UniCo. I must warn you, one year doesn't make one an expert. It is barely enough time to formulate some impression. And that's all I will be able to share with you, impressions."
"Excellent," Rick thinks to himself, "even Johnny wouldn't refer to mathematical models as ‘impressions.' On second thought, with Johnny Fisher, nobody knows. Better wait and see."
"UniCo is very famous today. This conglomerate, as you well know, is exhibiting unheard of growth and profits. It is of particular interest to our community since they are building a major high-tech operation here. Their growth is not just in their hightech subsidiaries, but in all their businesses. Every single one of them. My grant had a hefty travel budget, so believe me I checked."
"That's what I call a grant." Rick is probably not the only professor who had this thought cross his mind.
"It's apparent that they have embarked on a different way to manage their business," Johnny continues with his introduction. "And they don't hide it. They call it Theory of Constraints, or for those of us who love three-letter acronyms, TOC. But what is TOC? That's what I've tried to get a good grasp of. Not the details, but the concept, the framework."
Rick, like everybody else, has heard more and more about TOC in the last ten years or so. What he has heard and read made a lot of sense, but it kept changing. At first it was related to production scheduling. Then it became a banner to attack "product cost" methods. Then marketing. Lately, it seems TOC is more connected with methods to remove friction between people. If Johnny could provide some order for this mess, it