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About the Author
Lisa A. Ferguson, PhD, is the founder and CEO of IlluminutopiaSM, an organization that is focused on “Illuminating the way to utopia for individuals, organizations and societySM.” Our Websites are located at www.illuminutopia.com and www.illuminutopia.org. Lisa is coauthor, with Dr. Antoine van Gelder, of an S&T tree for hospitals. She is currently working on writing books and papers to publish as well. Until June 2008, she spent a year working directly with Dr. Eli Goldratt (the founder of the TOC) as his technical assistant and writer (learning how to write the way he does). Since 2005, Lisa has been teaching part-time for Goldratt Schools (GS) training consultants in different countries, including India, the United States, and Japan, to be TOC Experts or Supply Chain Logistics implementers. She has a PhD in Operations Management from Arizona State University and an MBA. She taught operations management full-time in a university business school for 10 years. The last 5 years were spent teaching only MBA and doctoral students with a practical focus. Lisa has been involved with the TOC International Certification Organization (TOCICO) since its inception. She is currently a member of its Board of Directors. She is TOCICO-certified in Supply Chain Logistics Project Management, and the Thinking Processes. She resides in Sedona, Arizona and enjoys spending time with horses, hiking, and playing tennis.
CHAPTER 35
Complex Environments
Daniel P. Walsh
Introduction
At times, the challenge of making the correct decisions in a value-added chain is daunting at best and at other times it is simply overwhelming. This appears to be the case in every organization regardless of size or the complexity1 of the products produced or services provided.
Reliance on suppliers and vendors both internal and external to our span of control further fuels the levels of uncertainty, complexity, and frustration. On any given day, we are ourselves a consumer, a producer, and a supplier of these very goods and services. Add the unreliability of our ability to forecast successfully future demand for our goods or services to the mix and it is no wonder we find ourselves mostly in a survival mode. Having observed these phenomena in many different companies within an industry sector and indeed across multiple industry sectors, the survival mode appears to be common practice. So much so that it is accepted and viewed as a fact of life that cannot be easily changed in spite of significant investments in improvement initiatives (Brown et al., 1994), and the environment has only grown more complex since this article was written.
If we view our organization as a system, then by definition all of the activities are connected. At first glance, they may appear