de_DE

Uwe Techt (en)

  • Blog
  • Contact

Continuous Improvement (6): Using Strategies & Tactics for Implementation

Continuous Improvement (6): Using Strategies & Tactics for Implementation

by Uwe Techt / Wednesday, 16 September 2015 / Published in QuiStain

In this final post of the series, we will discuss the final, but rather crucial, step of your change initiative: the practical implementation (that is, the “how to cause the change” part of the Thinking Processes).

Strategy and Tactics

During this stage you will find that the Strategy and Tactic Trees developed by Eli Goldratt will be of invaluable help. These are presented in great detail in this blog post; they are considered one of the most important tools the TOC has to offer and serve several functions in the Process of Ongoing Improvement:

  • A concrete implementation plan for the proposed changes.
  • Clear communication of all steps involved (as well as the underlying logic) to all employees, leading to harmony and cooperation
  • An auditing tool to verify that all necessary steps were taken in the correct order

How to develop an S&T Tree and the different kinds of trees at your disposal can be found here.

A Simple Process from Identifying the Gap to Building an S&T Tree
As many in the business world still considered development and implementation of strategies and tactics to be overly complex and tedious, Dr. Barnard came up with simplified procedurein 2009, starting from the gaps identified in the current situation and using the Evaporating Cloud to construct an S&T Tree, which is then used during the implementation of the change.1

 

This is completed in five concrete steps:

Step 1:
a.    Identify the gap keeping the organization from reaching its (ambitious) goal.
b.    Determine the impact (on throughput, Investment and Operating Expenses) of the decision not to close this gap.
c.    Define the most important Undesired Effects (independent causes contributing to the gap, also UDEs).
Step 2: Define the unresolved conflict underlying each of these UDEs.
Step 3: Identify the erroneous assumption for each of the conflicts.
Step 4: Replace them with new assumptions and resolve (evaporate) the conflict with a Win-Win solution (a new rule or “injection”).
Step 5: Using the data obtained from the above, you can then construct an S&T Tree as follows:

Evaporating Cloud Strategy and Tactic Tree
Conflict (A) Goal
Necessary Condition (B+C) Strategy
Old (invalid) assumptions Parallel assumptions
Injection (new rule) Tactic
Undesired Effect Necessary Assumption

 

The following graphic shows an example of what this might look like in practice:
StrategyTacticTree

Based on Alan Barnard: Proposed process using conflict cloud to creation/validate new S&T entities2

This offers you a simple and flexible process, taking you from the identification of the gap all the way to the full implementation of all changes necessary to reach the organizational goal (including control and monitoring): a Swiss army knife for change management.

These various tools, guides and tips make Continuous Improvement considerably easier to manage and integrate into day-to-day operations. The most important element will always be focus: what exactly do I need to change in order to achieve the biggest impact. This includes not doing something else and thus opening up the time and resources for the right change.

 

___________

1: Barnard A. 2009. ABB Case Study Helping Achieve One-Simple-ABB with TOC in SAP. South Africa: SAPICS 2009 Conference Proceedings (June).

2: Dr. Alan Barnard, “Continuous Improvement and Auditing” Cox III, James F., and Schleier Jr., John G., Ed. Theory of Constraints Handbook. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., 2010. p.. 448

Tagged under: Change Management, QuiStain, Theory of Constraints

What you can read next

Strategies and Tactics: New Applications and Developments
Holistic Implementation in practice (2)
Continuous Improvement (4): Questioning paradigms, resolving conflicts

Categories

Recent Posts

  • A Short Introduction to the Theory of Constraints

    A while back, an acquaintance asked me to summa...
  • Bullshit Jobs – What About Bullshit Projects?

    Bullshit Jobs is the title of David Graeber’s b...
  • The Agile Supply Chain

    Staying afloat in today’s market means being fa...
  • Is the OEE (Overall Equipment Efficiency) Metric a good thing?

    At first glance, how can it be bad. After all, ...
  • The Quickest Way to Improved Flow 2: Fixing the right mistakes

    In the first part of this series, we explained ...

Comments

  • Antifragililty and TOC by Uwe Tech | Theory Of ... on Antifragility: be ready for anything

Archive

Tag Cloud

buffer management buffer penetration CCPM change Change Management Company Culture Constraint Corporate Culture Critical Chain Projectmanagement Critical Chain Projektmanagement Customers Decisive Competitive Edge Eli Goldratt Five Focusing Steps Flow Focus Goldratt Guestpost holistic vision Learning from Experience lessons learned Management Management Focus Mulitproject Multi-tasking Multi project Multiproject Management Multitasking production Productivity Increase Projectmanagement Project Management Projects that Flow Psychology QuiStain Rudolf Burkhard Strategies and Tactics Strategy&Tactic Strategy and Tactics system based project management sytem based project management Theory of Constraints time sheets time sheets unnecessary and damaging TOC
  • GET SOCIAL

© 2019 Uwe Techt (Imprint | Privacy Policy)

TOP