Theory of Constraints Handbook - James Cox Iii [323]
The results of this gap in service delivery can be seen everywhere in these “un-serviced” or informal areas (Fig. 16-4). Huge piles of garbage (solid waste) can be found throughout poor settlements, making poverty, persistent ill health, and low environmental quality part of everyday life.
In view of this, the City Council in conjunction with InWEnt, organized a strategic Constraint Analysis and Planning Workshop with the invitation to stakeholders listing the following objectives of this workshop:
1. Joint analysis with involved stakeholders for a better understanding of the complex relationships between the different problems related to waste management services and their causes.
2. Identification and prioritization of capacity constraints and/or policies, measurements or behaviours that prevent the improvement of solid waste management (SWM) in the city.
3. Agreement on the critical contributions and capacity-building strategy to cope with the identified problems.
All stakeholders representing the different points of view and interests involved in this matter were invited to attend the workshop that was facilitated by Dr. Alan Barnard and Professor Antoine van Gelder (both TOC Experts)8 and supported by the InWEnt team of Michael Funcke-Bartz and Maria Sagué as well as the Kenyan project coordinator Stanley Mbagathi.
Step 0—Creating the Shift to a TOC/Systems Approach Paradigm
The workshop is opened by the most senior representative of the City Council (normally the Mayor or Town Clerk) to share the objective of the workshop and why they have invited all stakeholders to contribute to the analysis and solution development (to ensure it is a winwin-win). Then a representative from InWEnt shared why they have selected TOC as the approach to do a holistic analysis on the system and why they partnered with the TOC experts to facilitate the workshop (to establish credibility).
FIGURE 16-5 Example of the solid waste management chain/system.
During the morning session, the TOC facilitator introduces TOC as a simple and powerful way to overcome the five challenges listed in Table 16-1, faced by all stakeholders in both private and public organizations (constraints, complexity, conflicts, uncertainty, and bad choices/behaviors). To show the magnitude of the inherent potential that can be unlocked if the right “limiting assumptions” are challenged and replaced with the right rules (that enable better exploitation of the system constraint), the TOC expert can use an interactive simulation game such as the “multitasking” game9 that shows how, by just changing from a rule of “multitasking” (based on an assumption that the earlier we start the earlier we finish) to a rule of “no multitasking” (based on a realization that the later we start the sooner we finish) we can do double the amount of projects in half the time with the same resources.
The simulation game also provides an opportunity to introduce TOC’s 5FS and TP analysis process of defining the goal, gaps, consequences, UDEs, core conflict, injection, and associated actionable changes in the rules, and potential negatives, and how to prevent these and implementation obstacles and how to overcome these. The introduction part ends with relevant success stories of where TOC has been applied and introduces the roadmap and desired outcomes for the rest of the five days, inviting everyone to contribute actively. An example of the slides used for such an introduction can be downloaded at www.goldrattresearchlabs.com (in the “Downloads” section).
Step 1—Getting Agreement on the System Constraint and Why Change?
The afternoon of Day 1 starts with representatives of each of the stakeholders coming forward to draw