TOCICO

Eli (Goldratt, 2009) distilled out the 4 concepts (principles) of flow by considering how the seminal innovations in manufacturing flow management were developed to embrace increasingly unstable environments. The absence of reference to ‘constraints’ highlights the more abstract nature of these principles that encompass lean and TOC thinking. The focus on flow and limiting over production with continuous improvement are largely self-evident, but alongside this he exposes the need for a paradigm shift in thinking often missing in such applications (principle 3: abolish local efficiency). This presentation seeks to illustrate and extend these findings acknowledging the importance of system-based management signaling tools and the management of aggregated buffers in increasingly unstable environments. The presentation also explores how the choice of mechanism combines the need to both manage and reduce variability and uncertainty. In more stable environments the emphasis is on reducing variation and uncertainty across the delivery system, but higher instability brings with it the opportunity to gain immediate benefits which is where TOC exploits the opportunity to focus and use aggregated buffers to first align and then reduce the impact of variability and uncertainty. The presentation considers how this understanding can be used to interpret and extend mechanisms such as Statistical Process Control, Kanban, Vendor Managed Inventory, the Last Planner System and Buffer Management in a health and social care setting. Finally, the presentation identifies the growing need to hybridize and adjust the choice of mechanism where the nature and level of instability changes over time. References Goldratt, (2009), Standing on the shoulders of Giants: Production concepts versus production applications The Hitachi Tool Engineering Example, Goldratt Consulting.