Theory of Constraints Handbook - James Cox Iii [510]
5. Some bank tellers (students or their spouses) quit at college graduation.
6. Bank teller jobs are low paying entry-level positions.
7. The bank loses a lot of revenue from past, existing, and potential customers.
8. Some tellers make errors in customer accounts.
9. Some tellers do not know how to handle multiple complex transactions.
10. Some tellers are extremely slow.
11. Many customers go elsewhere to bank.
12. Many customers complain about poor service to other customers (existing and potential).
13. New employees do not know the names, likes, and dislikes of loyal customers.
The team immediately identified three causes for UDE #3 and mapped them accordingly (step 3), as illustrated in Fig. 25-19.
They then added UDE #6 to the cluster (step 3-2 Fig. 25-20).
They continued to follow the steps (step 4), and Fig. 25-21 is the CRT on which they agreed reflected the reality of the situation.
of the vast majority of the “real UDEs.”
FIGURE 25-19 Bank CRT step 3.
FIGURE 25-20 Bank CRT step 3-2.
As you examine the bank’s CRT, you may find yourself questioning some of the entities and the cause-effect relationships as they are represented in the model. If so, and if you had been sitting in the room with the bankers at the time, your reservations might have helped them end up with a more “perfect” CRT. Nevertheless, I do believe this is a “perfect example” to share with you. It is from real life, not an ivory tower. Real managers expended real human energy to understand their environment better for the purpose of making decisions and taking actions that would cause real improvement for their bank and their customers. “Perfect” logic may be a good aspiration to help you keep the mindset of the scientist. However, it is quite inappropriate to spend an exorbitant amount of time to map out “the perfect CRT.” Do not allow “analysis paralysis” to set in! As you will see, the full set of TP provides excellent safety nets. Even if the CRT is not “perfect,” the subsequent steps will help you pick up anything important that you may have missed.
The Branch Manager summarized the CRT in the Cloud shown in Fig. 25-22.
The bank team identified entity #140 (step 5), “The bank is unable to maintain an adequate pay structure to provide stable employment.” If the bank would have instead constructed the Cloud using the core problem entity as the D entity of the cloud, the Cloud may have looked like the one shown in Fig. 25-23.
Note that in either case, the conflict is well represented in the CRT (step 6).
FIGURE 25-21 Bank CRT.
The “Three-Cloud Method”
The first two steps are the same as in the “Snowflake Method.” Define the subject matter and identify several (6 to 12) UDEs. The next step leads us to identifying the core problem in the form of a conflict—a core conflict—and the subsequent steps are used to identify the cause-effect connections between the core conflict and the UDEs. We will pick up from Step 3.
FIGURE 25-22 Bank Cloud.
FIGURE 25-23 Bank Cloud 2 UDE the bank puts up with being unable to maintain an adequate pay structure to provide stable employment.
3. Select three UDEs, making sure to select them from diverse aspects of the system. A good guideline to follow is to select UDEs that do not seem to be connected to each other via cause and effect. Create a Cloud for each of the selected UDEs according to the template shown in Fig. 15-24.
Three of the bank’s UDEs, verbalized as ECs, are shown in Figs. 25-25 through 25-27.
4. From the three Clouds, create the Generic Cloud of the system, which is the core conflict. When you examine the three Clouds together, you will be able to uncover a theme for the As, the Bs, the Cs, the Ds, and the D′s. I find Table 25-4 useful, and have used it to illustrate how the bank’s three specific UDE Clouds are converted into a Generic Cloud.
Now you can create the Generic Cloud as seen in Fig. 25-28.
The bank’s Generic Cloud, according to the Three-Cloud Method, is shown in Fig. 25-29.
Notice the