Theory of Constraints Handbook - James Cox Iii [632]
Wright, J. and King, R. 2006. We All Fall down—Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints for Healthcare Systems. Great Barrington, MA: North River Press.
About the Author
After training in the field of engineering and working for many years as an award-winning business troubleshooter in the UK, Julie Wright found TOC while augmenting her business skills as a mature student. At the Avraham Goldratt Academy in New Haven, Connecticut, she was given the opportunity to combine her business experience with her passion for healthcare and committed to a long-term personal goal that would lead to the publication of We All Fall Down—Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints for Healthcare, which she describes as the “What to Change” of the TOC improvement cycle for healthcare. After successfully implementing her findings in the UK, she is now working out of Dallas, Texas as the Director of Education for TOC-Healthcare Inc., introducing TOC to large-scale healthcare facilities in the United States and beyond.
As a long-time volunteer for TOC for Education, and like most other TOC practitioners, she claims to spend far too much time travelling and working in front of a computer and far too little time exploring the wonderful locations she visits for TOC events and work.
SECTION VIII
TOC in Complex Environments
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CHAPTER 33
Theory of Constraints in Complex Organizations
CHAPTER 34
Applications of Srategy and Tactics Trees in Organizations
CHAPTER 35
Complex Environments
CHAPTER 36
Combining Lean, Six Sigma, and the Theory of Constraints to Achieve Breakthrough Performance
CHAPTER 37
Using TOC in Complex Systems
CHAPTER 38
Theory of Constraints for Personal Productivity/Dilemmas
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Here, examples of TOC implementation and benefits for particularly complex environments, such as the large for-profit corporations, not-for-profit organizations, and other environments are discussed. The TOC Thinking Processes, The Strategy and Tactic Tree, TOC measurements, the Five Focusing Steps of TOC, and other TOC elements are brought to bear in real case examples showing how they work together as an integrated system of tools for sustainable improvement. Wide-ranging applications include manufacturing, a church environment and how to improve personal productivity. Integrating TOC with Lean and Six Sigma; why and how to do it is also covered.
In a large complex corporation, how can the flow of ideas needed for development, production, sales and distribution of a new product be planned and tracked across organizational silos? How can executives at the top know that ideas are flowing as they should and that interorganization commitments are being met? How can they see issues coming before it is too late to recover? These topics are covered in this section. Then, how are Strategy and Tactic Trees used to frame the strategic direction of a company moving to make dramatic improvement in profit? Generic Strategy and Tactic trees are discussed with one examined in detail to show how the strategy is shaped and then used to knit the organization together with a unified focus on its strategic direction.
CHAPTER 33
Theory of Constraints in Complex Organizations
James R. Holt and Lynn H. Boyd
Overview
What makes an organization complex? What are the unique problems of complex organizations? How can the Theory of Constraints (TOC) help solve those problems? This chapter attempts to answer these questions. We start by providing a definition of complexity and then describe the core conflict of complex organizations, which we believe results from the need for both continual growth and organizational stability. One of the defining characteristics of complex organizations is that they have many independently measured units that are all trying to maximize local measures. The significant problem complex organizations face is coordination of these independent yet interdependent units. We make the assumption that the independent units and departments within complex organizations use Drum-Buffer-Rope (DBR) and Critical Chain