Lean Sales and Marketing thru Service Design Thinking » Theory-of-Constraints

The New Knowledge Management Game eBook

business901 — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 02:30:00 +0000

Jack Vinson, a Knowledge Management and Theory of Constraints expert, was my guest on the Business901 Podcast, The New Knowledge Management Game. This is a transcription of the podcast with four pages of additional material that was cut from the podcast.

The New Knowledge Management Game

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The New Knowledge Management Game

business901 — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 02:00:00 +0000

Jack Vinson, a Knowledge Management and Theory of Constraints expert, was my guest on the Business901 Podcast. He is passionate and well versed in both subjects and we had a spirited conversation about them. A bottom line person, Jack is constantly looking for ways to see how the products he manages can help the customer be more effective with their time and energy.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Jack has been a knowledge management advocate and technology enthusiast and is the president of Knowledge Jolt, Inc., a knowledge management consultancy (2004 – 2007). He is deeply interested in how people work, whether that is as individuals, in small groups or within organizations. Within Knowledge Jolt, he focuses on helping organizations understand how they use their information. As an example, he worked with an insurance company and their call center to implement a content management vision as part of a large group of technology and business people. He has also worked with small firms to start the discussion around how they want to use their knowledge and the ever-changing horizons of technology on the offer. He continues to evangelize the importance of personal knowledge management to build individual and group effectiveness.

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Lean, Six Sigma, Agile Consultants become a Recognized Expert

business901 — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 03:30:00 +0000

For the next Marketing your Black Belt Program, I am offering a special opportunity. The program is actually designed for Professional Service Consultants that work in a technical field such as Lean, Agile or Six Sigma. It is well suited for the one-person or small consulting company of less than 10 people. This 28-day program consist of six sessions. During the first three sessions you will receive all the tools and training needed to design your individual 28-day(it is Agile) marketing action plan. It will start on the 1st Friday of the month, Feb. 4th and for the following 28 days.

Session 1: 60 minutes(Friday@ 11:00AM)
Session 2: 60 minutes(Monday@ 11:00AM)
Session 3: 60 minutes(Tuesday@ 11:00AM)
Session 4, 5, 6: 45 minutes(Friday@ 11:00AM)

In addition to the six live webinars and coaching sessions, the program includes:

White papers and resources
Weekly email support between class sessions
Review of individual marketing action plans with feedback
All class sessions are recorded so participants who miss a session, or wish to review, may listen and review at their convenience.

In addition to the above and for the next 7 days or until the class is full, I am offering the following bonuses:

Lean Marketing House eBook
Marketing with A3 eBook
5Cs of Driving Market Share Audio Program
Best in Market eBook
Podcast interview and published on the Business901 Website*
(2) Generated News releases.
20 to 30 page eBook(Transcribed from Podcast)**

This webinar will be taped and published as part of future training programs so your participation will require a release to be signed. However, your participation and expertise will be further enhanced from the future marketing efforts of the program.

Registration Page: Marketing Your Black Belt

*Podcast will be published within 120 days of completion of program.
**eBook will be created within 21 days of completion of podcast recording.

This program will provide you with the tools and the knowledge to enhance your position as an expert in your field. The last three sessions will cover specific strategies and tactics geared toward Customer Acquisition/Retention and Pricing of Services.

Registration Page: Marketing Your Black Belt

There are a limited number of seats.

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Bringing New Thoughts to the Supply Chain thru MRP

business901 — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 03:30:00 +0000

Chad Smith of the Constraints Management Group was the guest on the Business901 Podcast. Chad is currently writing the third revised edition of Orlickys Materials Requirements Planning with Carol Ptak (a former B901 Podcast Guest).

Excerpt from the podcast:

Joe: My customers are not only looking for shortened cycles but they’re also looking for more customization. We need customization and shorter supply chain cycles. That is reality today. Am I wrong?

Chad: No, you are exactly right. That is why I caution people that are in the Lean community or in the TOC community to understand that the solution is not inward facing. It is outward facing. It is the interface or the integration between linkages in the supply chain and that commonly occurs from the manufacture to distributor or manufacture to customer and then manufacture back to all its suppliers.

And let’s face it. Let’s be real here. Global capacity is exceeding global demand right now. So looking for better scheduling techniques inside of four walls, instead of looking for better synchronization techniques across a supply chain or a product structure. In my opinion, is the wrong way to go.

There is a prerequisite order here to getting better. The prerequisite order is…listen to the podcast

Chad Smith is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Constraints Management Group (CMG), a services and technology company specializing in pull-based manufacturing, materials and project management systems for mid-range and large manufacturers. Chad has a wide range of experience in successfully applying pull-based systems within a diverse scope of organizations and industries.

Since the late 1990’s Chad and his partners at CMG have been at the forefront of developing and articulating the concepts behind Actively Synchronized Replenishment as well as building ASR compliant technology (Replenishment+®). Additionally, Chad is an internationally recognized expert in the application and development of the Theory of Constraints (TOC).

This is a podcast that you do not want to miss!

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Theory of Constraints in Services eBook

business901 — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:13:00 +0000

John Arthur Ricketts, a distinguished engineer at IBM was my guest on the Business901 Podcast titled Using the Theory of Constraints in Services. This is a transcription of the podcast.

Using TOC in Services

John is a practitioner and innovator in the field of Theory of Constraints. His book, Reaching The Goal: How Managers Improve a Services Business Using Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints , was published in 2008 by IBM Press. Dr. Eli Goldratt, founder of the Theory of Constraints, said it’s one of the best books ever written on TOC. John is also the author of “Theory of Constraints in Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services (Chapter 29 of Theory of Constraints Handbook) ,” a chapter in the Theory of Constraints Handbook published in 2010.

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Making your numbers meaningful with Throughput Accounting

business901 — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 13:05:00 +0000

Dr. Charlene Spoede Budd was my guest on the Business901 Podcast titled Developing Predictive Measures with Throughput Accounting and as you would expect our discussion was about the Theory of Constraints Through-put Accounting methods and the application of the knowledge that we gain from this information. This is a transcription of the podcast.

Throughput Accounting –

Dr. Budd was a contributor to the recent Theory of Constraints Handbook on two separate subjects:

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Using the Theory of Constraints in Services

business901 — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 03:00:00 +0000

The Business901 Podcast featured John Arthur Ricketts, a distinguished engineer at IBM Corporate Headquarters. As a consulting partner and technical executive, he has dealt with many services management issues, including those faced by clients in their own services businesses. His work in applied analytics led him to become a focal point on Theory of Constraints (TOC), and then to delve deeply into its potential for services management.

John is very informative with a practical approach to applying TOC to services. I believe anyone involved in continuous improvement field will benefit from this podcast.

John is a practitioner and innovator in the field of Theory of Constraints. His book, Reaching The Goal: How Managers Improve a Services Business Using Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints , was published in 2008 by IBM Press. Reviewers on Amazon.com soon gave it a five-star rating. And Dr. Eli Goldratt, founder of the Theory of Constraints, said it’s one of the best books ever written on TOC. John is also the author of “Theory of Constraints in Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services (Chapter 29 of Theory of Constraints Handbook) ,” a chapter in the Theory of Constraints Handbook published in 2010.

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Thinking Process and System Thinking in Management eBook

business901 — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:00:00 +0000

This is a transcription of a podcast with Bill Dettmer, Senior Partner of Goal Systems International. Bill is the author of The Logical Thinking Process: A Systems Approach to Complex Problem Solving ) and Strategic Navigation: A Systems Approach to Business Strategy, two books around which Goal Systems International’s internationally renowned Thinking Process Course is based. An excerpt form the book.

Joe: One of the things that ? and this is going to be my Six Sigma side coming out. Don’t you have to support all this with data? You can’t be intuitive about everything because sometimes just the outward appearance of something lies to you if you don’t have the supporting data.

Bill: Yes, you’re absolutely right. Where does the data become most important? The data is most important in the identification of the problem. It’s not in the creation of the solution because that’s a projection of what should happen in the future. It’s not in the establishment of the goal and the necessary conditions because those are value judgments. But, when you start to analyze what the problem is, in other words when you’re building the current reality tree, that’s where data become really important. One of the key lessons I try to convey in my thinking process courses is the most critical of all of the categories of legitimate reservation is entity existence.

Systemizing your Approach to Management with Bill Dettmer

Thinking Process and System Thinking in Management eBook

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Developing Predictive Measures with Throughput Accounting

business901 — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Dr. Charlene Spoede Budd was my guest on the Business901 Podcast and as you would expect our discussion was about the Theory of Constraints Through-put Accounting methods and the application of the knowledge that we gain from this information. We discussed the use of accounting throughout the organization for developing predictive measures versus reactive. This is not your regular accounting discussion.

Dr. Budd was a contributor to the recent Theory of Constraints Handbook on two separate subjects:

Charlene Spoede Budd is a Professor Emeritus from Baylor University, where she taught management accounting and project management classes for a number of years. She is certified in all areas of the Theory of Constraints and is the Chair of the Finance and Metrics Committee of the Theory of Constraints International Certification Organization. Her research has been published primarily in practitioner journals and she has been awarded three Certificates of Merit for articles published in Strategic Finance. Dr. Budd has co-authored two accounting textbooks with her most recent book, A Practical Guide to Earned Value Project Management.

The subject matter may seem a tad dry but give this podcast a chance, I do not think you will be disappointed!

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Businesses that Die, Die of confusion

business901 — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 11:00:00 +0000

So to survive, you must prevent confusion? Bill Dettmer of Goal Systems International, Theory of Constraints Expert and upcoming podcast guest recommended a book to me about Systems Thinking. It was Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales. At the time it sounded like an odd recommendation but Bill was “spot on” about the book. It caused me more reflection than any book has in years. One of the particular areas that Laurence described in the book is this state of confusion or of being lost. He said:

Research suggests five general stages in the process of person goes through when lost.

In the first, you deny that you disorientated and press on with growing urgency, attempting to make your mental map fit what you see.

In the next stage as you realize that you genuinely lost, the urgency blossoms into a full scale survival emergency. Clear thought becomes impossible and action because frankly, unproductive, even dangerous.

In the third stage (usually following injury or exhaustion), you expend the chemicals of emotion and form a strategy for finding some place that matches the mental map. (It is a misguided strategy, for there is no such place now: you are lost.)

In the fourth stage, you deteriorate both rationally and emotionally, as a strategy falls to resolve the conflict.

In the final stage, as you run out of options and energy, you must become resigned to your plight. Like it or not you must make a new mental map of where you are. You must become Robertson Crusoe or you will die. To survive, you must find yourself. Then it won’t matter where you are.

Psychologists who study the behavior of people, who get lost, report that very few ever backtrack. Though, that is the most reasonable and successful way to survive. Even staying exactly where you are is more prudent than blazing a path forward. However our eyes look forward into real or imagined worlds. The typical impulse of people that become loss is to panic. Why? It is because of the lack of a mental map that matches the environment they are in. If you had a mental map of where you just came from, you would simply turn around and go back to where you started.

Are you thinking recovery is just around the corner? Are things taking longer than expected? Are you scrambling for the next great idea? Is innovation panic? I question sometimes whether innovation is really the strategy for companies to survive during recessionary times. Instituting new mental maps, products or services may make things progressively more unfamiliar and mixed up.

Innovation may not be the key. Scott Berkun in his book Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management (Theory in Practice (O’Reilly)) devoted a chapter to ‘What to do When Things Go Wrong” and pointed out an eight step process.

1. Calm down: Nothing makes a situation worse than basing your actions on fear, anger, or frustration.
2. Evaluate the problem in relation to the project: Just because someone else thinks the sky has fallen doesn’t mean that it has. Is this really a problem at all? Whose problem is it?
3. Calm down again: Now that you know something about the problem, you might really get upset (“How could those idiots let happen!?”).
4. Get the right people in the room: Any major problem won’t impact you alone. Identify who else is most responsible, knowledgeable, and useful and get them in together straight away.
5. Explore alternatives: After answering any questions and clarifying the situation, figure out what your options are.
6. Make the simplest plan: Weigh the options, pick the best choice, and make a simple plan. The best available choice is the best available choice, no matter how much it sucks (a crisis is not the time for idealism). The more urgent the issue, the simpler your plan.
7. Execute: Make it happen.
8. Debrief: After the fire is out, get the right people in the room and generate a list of lessons learned.

Though Scott’s plan is not a cure-all, it emphasizes the need to stay calm and build simple plans. One of the most effective strategies you can do is build value stream maps. Not for the typical Lean reasons or reducing waste but to create a current state map or a mental model for where you are today. I cannot emphasize enough the ability to accept where you are, what resources you have and if you know how you got here, you may be just fine in understanding how to survive.

As Laurence Gonzales states, “If we persist in bending the map until we can no longer deny the evidence of our senses, it can be terrifying. It’s not something that happens immediately. First it’s a sense of disorientation: “I’m not in Kansas anymore. “ Then the words start to become strange, landmarks are no longer familiar.” Do you need innovation to survive? It is one thing if you an innovative company already and have an existing mental map. It is quite another, if one does not exist. You may wake up and find out you’re not in Kansas anymore!

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Using Theory of Constraints to handle Uncertainty in Decision Making

business901 — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:00:00 +0000

This is a transcription of a podcast I had with noted Theory of Constraints author and expert Eli Schragenheim . Eli as been part of the Theory of Constraints movement practically from the beginning. He started working with Dr. Goldratt as a programmer to program a game for adults that would teach them how to think over 25 years ago. During the podcast we dove into the subject of Uncertainty! A great discussion, that affects our everyday life and how it relates to forecasting and even our intuition.

Uncertainty in Decision Making

He is the author of Management Dilemmas: The Theory of Constraints Approach to Problem Identification and Solutions. He recently collaborated with William Detmer and Wayne Patterson on the book Supply Chain Management at Warp Speed: Integrating the System from End to End. The new book contains much of the new development of TOC and operations.

You can contact Eli Schrangenheim through his e-mail @ elyakim@netvision.net.il

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Removing Uncertainty in your Decision Marketing

business901 — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:02:29 +0000

I had great pleasure having Eli Schragenheim on the Business901 Podcast. Eli has been part of the Theory of Constraints movement practically from the beginning. He started working with Dr. Goldratt as a programmer to program a game for adults that would teach them how to think over 25 years ago. During the podcast we dove into the subject of Uncertainty! A great discussion, that affects our everyday life and how it relates to forecasting and even our intuition.

From the Podcast: We cannot really predict the future. We can predict some reasonable range of the future needed to make a decision. This is hard for forecasting. Forecasting is an unbelievably important tool for managers, but again they need to understand what does it mean and what does it contain and how wrong could it be.

In the past 25 years, Eli Schragenheim has taught, spoken at conferences, and consulted in more than 15 countries, including the United States, Canada, India, China, and Japan. He has also developed software simulation tools especially designed to experience the thinking of TOC, and consultant with several application software companies to develop the right TOC functionality in their own packages. Mr. Schragenheim was a partner in the A. Y. Goldratt Institute and is now a Director of Goldratt schools.

You can contact Eli Schrangenheim through his e-mail @ elyakim@netvision.net.il

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Theory of Constraints Supply Chain Thinking

business901 — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:24:45 +0000

This a transcription of the Business901 podcast that featured Amir Schragenheim, President of Inherent Simplicity, a software firm specializing in TOC software for Production & Distribution environments. Inherent Simplicity is the exclusive software supplier for Production & Distribution software to Goldratt Consulting, Eli Goldratt’s consulting firm, in their Viable Vision strategic projects.

Implementing the TOC Supply Chain Solution

Related Podcast:: Implementing the TOC Supply Chain Solution

Amir’s Website: Inherent Simplicity

Related TOC Books:
Isn’t It Obvious?
Theory of Constraints Handbook

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In a Supply Chain, Where is more important than How Much!

business901 — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 11:30:00 +0000

Carol Ptak is first and foremost a thought leader. You will find in the podcast that Carol has an extensive background in Supply Chain and Management. It was one of my most informative podcasts full of fresh ideas, examples and usable material. Even though it centered around Supply Chain most of the principles can easily be applied in other areas such as operations and even marketing.

In her other life, she is a Visiting Professor and Executive in residence at Pacific Lutheran University, a farmer and dog trainer. This is after years of experience in management at PeopleSoft and IBM Corp as well as many years of consulting expertise. At PeopleSoft, she developed the concept of Demand Driven Manufacturing, as an overall product and marketing strategy to align product development, market awareness, and demand generation. Her innovative approach is credited with significantly improving the companies position in the manufacturing industry software market and earned her national recognition in publications such as CFO Magazine and the New York Times.

Our discussion centered around Actively Synchronized Replenishment(ASR) a new way of thinking for supplying chain management. It provides an alternative demand driven approach for planning and controlling mature overflow and contrasted to the poor business results embedded in most traditional material requirements planning systems.

She co-authored a chapter with Chad Smith in the Theory of Constraints Handbook and has authored and co-authored books such as Necessary but Not Sufficient: A Theory of Constraints Business Novel, The Quantum Leap: Next Generation and several others. She has been asked by McGraw-Hill and presently updating Orlicky’s Material Requirements Planning.

You can also purchase just this chapter: Integrated Supply Chain (Chapter 12 of Theory of Constraints Handbook).

ASR Website: http://beyondMRP.com

P.S. You can learn a lot about Carol by the quote that is included at the bottom of her emails: "Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal" Friedrich Nietzsche

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