Theory of Constraints Handbook - James Cox Iii [779]
4When one discusses an improvement initiative with employees, many times the employee will say: “That will never work here, we are different.” Pay close attention to the employee’s reasons it will fail; he or she is probably right. You may not be addressing the core problem, you may not understand what would block that initiative, etc.
5The TOCICO Dictionary (Sullivan et al., 2007, 11) defines undesirable effect as “A negative aspect of the current reality defined in relation to the organizational or system’s goal or its necessary conditions. UDEs are believed to be a visible symptom of a deeper, underlying root cause, core problem, or core conflict. Usage: Some characteristics of a well-articulated UDE include: 1. a complete statement about a single consequence which does not contain the following words/phrases: ‘and’, ‘because of’, or ’as a result of ’; 2. an effect that is within management’s span of control; 3. something that exists in the reality of the organization precisely as stated; 4. something that is negative in its own right, without dependence on any other factor; 5. neither a presumed cause nor a presumed solution of the organization’s core conflict or its major dilemma. Most, if not all, UDEs should appear as entities within the current reality tree.” (© TOCICO 2007, used by permission, all rights reserved.)
6Evaporating Clouds are presented in Section VI on Thinking Processes, this volume.
7The TOCICO Dictionary (Sullivan et al., 2007, 27–28) defines the three-cloud approach as “(a) relatively fast method of developing a current reality tree (CRT) wherein the developer identifies three seemingly independent undesirable effects (UDEs), creates an evaporating cloud (EC) for each, and synthesizes the three ECs into single generic cloud called the core conflict cloud (CCC).” (© TOCICO 2007, used by permission, all rights reserved.)
8The TOCICO Dictionary (Sullivan et al., 2007, 50) defines change sequence as “The three stages that must be completed in the successful management of change within a system. The change sequence answers the following three questions: 1. What to change? 2. To what to change? and, 3. How to cause the change?” (© TOCICO 2007, used by permission, all rights reserved.)
9The TOCICO Dictionary (Sullivan et al., 2007, 14) defines the current reality tree (CRT) as “(a) thinking processes sufficiency-based logic diagram that facilitates answering the first question in the change sequence, namely, “what to change?” The CRT is a diagram that illustrates the cause-effect relationships that exist between the core problem and the most, if not all, of the undesirable effects (UDEs).” (© TOCICO 2007, used by permission, all rights reserved.)
10The TOCICO Dictionary (Sullivan et al., 2007, 8) defines categories of legitimate reservation (CLR) as “The rules for scrutinizing the validity and logical soundness of thinking processes logic diagrams. Seven logical reservations are grouped into three levels. Level I: clarity reservation. Level II: causality existence and entity existence reservations. Level III: cause insufficiency, additional cause, predicted effect existence, and cause-effect reversal (tautology) reservations.” (© TOCICO 2007, used by permission, all rights reserved.) The CLR are presented in Chapter 25.
11The TOCICO Dictionary (Sullivan et al., 2007, 14) defines core conflict as “(t) he systemic conflict that causes the vast majority of the undesirable effects in the current reality of the system being studied. The core conflict is often generic in nature and can be derived by generalizing the various conflicts that underlie the undesirable effects that persist in the system.” (© TOCICO 2007, used by permission, all rights reserved.)
12Such as nurses having to double chart—keeping both paper and computerized records of the same events. Another example might be an unacceptable time delay in the delivery of consumables from stores to the treatment areas, which results in