Critical Chain - Eliyahu M. Goldratt [54]
At first we didn't know where it was coming from, but after your colloquium, Johnny, we don't have any doubt."
Smiling, Johnny reacts, "So you want me to stop teaching what I'm teaching?"
"Not at all," Charlene is quick to respond. "I think what you teach is very good. Every professional in accounting has known for a long time that something was wrong. True, your students irritate me a little with their new ability to point out the fallacies so clearly. But I don't have a real problem with it. I just want to know more about it than they do. Is that too much to ask?"
"That's basically what we all want." Jim puts his hand on Johnny's shoulder. "Your colloquium was fascinating, but it wasn't enough. We want to know more about what you teach in your production course."
Laughing, Charlene adds, "First, because we do want to know. Second, because we can't afford not to know."
I don't say a word. I don't agree. I, for one, don't want to know. What does it help to know? I'm through with stuffing my head with all this garbage. It won't help keep the house for Judith. It won't help me keep Judith.
Besides, all this mumbo jumbo about links in a chain. The mistake there is so obvious, even a child can spot it. So much fuss about nothing.
"I'd be delighted to," Johnny is all smiles.
Of course he is delighted. Why shouldn't he be? He is a chaired professor.
And I'm sure that last year, on his sabbatical, besides his majestic salary from the university, UniCo paid him another fortune.
"The production application of TOC," Johnny is all business, "is a straight deduction of the five focusing steps." He stands up and goes to the board. "The first step, as you may recall, is identify the constraint." And in capital letters he writes ‘1. IDENTIFY.'
"Suppose you identified the constraint, the bottleneck. Then the next..."
He is so full of himself I can't stand it any longer. I cut him off. "Okay, let's cut the crap and for a change let's be practical," I challenge him. "In practice there is more than one constraint. And don't tell me that one work center has to be loaded more than others. In mathematics it might be so, but in reality the differences are negligible."
I ignore the surprised expressions on Jim's and Charlene's faces, and charge on. "It's clear even in your chain analogy. Theoretically one link is the weakest. But practically? In a real chain, the next weakest link is almost the same, it's just infinitesimally stronger. All your arguments are based on nothing."
I've shown them what I really think about their theories. I'm not going to continue being the nice guy. In the time I still have left in academia I'm going to speak my mind. When something is garbage, I'm going to call it garbage.
The way Johnny continues raises my blood pressure. With his best scholastic manners he has the nerve to say, "This is a very interesting question."
Interesting, my ass. I nailed him, and he knows it.
Not surprisingly, he immediately starts to cover up, to cloud the issue with fancy mathematics.
I barely listen when he mumbles something about when you use linear programming to solve the equations, and then you use sensitivity analysis, you see that a system having two constraints results in only unstable solutions.
Jim starts to take my side. "Johnny, can you answer Rick's question without using mathematics?"
"Sure," he says.
Leaning forward, I challenge him, "Let's see." I'm not going to let him get away with some empty convoluted sentences. I've played this game long enough. Enough to know how to expose phonies.
On the left-hand corner of the board Johnny draws a line of circles. "These represent work centers. The flow of material is from left to right."
Let it be.
"Let's suppose that we want