Endless abundance over on Amazon

I'm planning to do a bit of research before my next post so it might be a few days in the making. Until then I just wanted to point out the total abundance of interesting resources I have been finding on Amazon. As you can see in the disclaimer above, I have decided to join their "associates" program and create my own focused store. In the past, all my Amazon searches were very focused. This time I started running wide searches and I collected so many interesting options into my store. Right now I have more than 150 products, mostly books, and more are to come. I will also add categories to make it a bit easier to find stuff. I hope you find this a useful resource.

Great Theory of Constraints resource - YouTube

I'm interrupting my shop floor series to share with you another grate resource - the TOCexpert channel on YouTube.

Hope you enjoy

Using a simple problem to demonstrate the TP

Looking through my blog's statistics, it is very clear that Thinking Process is the most interesting topic for people. I know it is the part of TOC I found the most mystifying. So I did a bit more web digging and found this little gem in a site filled with TOC examples – a simple example of all the steps of the thinking process. This example takes a very very simple problem and runs it through all the steps. Now we are talking a very simple problem (did I mention the problem is simple?), so putting it through the full TP process seams silly and at first leaves the impression that somebody really lost their common sense and any sense of proportion at the same time. Yet once I have gone through it I immediately had those lovely "A-Ha" moments when everything just clicks in place AND I finally figures out what's a transition tree. So I have to hand it to whoever did all the hard work setting up all those trees – Great Job!

I do want to warn you that some things, though, didn’t work so well, this being a very simple problem (I'm starting to feel like a broken record). First, the use of the Three Cloud Technique (which, by the way has you write 4 clouds; 3 from the UDEs and a generalized one), in this example this step is totally redundant and all 4 clouds ended up being virtually the same cloud with slightly different wording. Second, although once the general cloud was ready, you can easily understand how it was turned into the CRT this CRT has no root cause in it since it starts with the common goal and builds up from it. This CRT basically explores what is the expected reality if we choose to implement only one side of the conflict or the other. Third, the FRT is built from an injection defined in the general cloud phase and is very simply the CRT's negative. This feels way too simplistic and is probably not representative of the way the CRT and FRT will look and feel when using this process on a complex problem.

Hope you find this helpful and I'd be glad to know what you think.

10 Places to start Your journey

My dearest darling is very supportive, he even visited this blog. Then he told everyone who would listen that it is not in any language known to man.

If you concur, here are some great places to make your first strides:

1. The book shelf - read "The Goal" and any other business novel or book by Dr. Goldratt (there may be a new one on the way), add "The Choice" after you've read a few of the others; it is a bit harder, even though it is still an easy read.
2. Join Dr. Goldratt's basic workshop "TOC for the Ever Flourishing Company" at the Goldratt House, even people who have been around Theory of Constraints concepts for years told me they found value in this workshop. This is not overly expensive as the workshop costs about $250 but you do need to pay for travel and accomodations
3. Attend a TOCICO event in person in a conference (here is some data on the 2010 conference) or through the web in a webinar. You can also commit to a Theory of Constraints certification process and start taking the exams. Costs start as low as $40 for a webinar, through $100 for an exam to about $2,000 for a conference. Note that some activities require you become a member of the TOCICO which costs about $200 (less for people in academia)
4. Join the Goldratt Schools program. They offer different programs, some are offered only as a whole and in some you can attend only the sessions you are interested in. From what I understood of their web site joining the whole program costs $10,000 up front + another $10,000 success based fee to be paid only if real life results of X10 the basic fee are achieved (meaning you pay $20,000 for real life results of the scale of $100,000, I think that's quite fair, if you can come up with the $10,000 to begin with)
5. Use the self learning tools put out by Dr. Goldratt's team such as the TOC Insights self learning program ($80 per subject, $800 for all) or TOC.TV (this has some free content but is mostly pay per view and subscription based)
6. Use this highly recommended site. I've been referred to this site many times and it always came highly recommended, but I still have to give it a deep scan, so I can't chime in with my point of view at this time.
7. Visit the "Focus and Leverage" blog, written by Bob Sproull. This is a step by step intro into TOC for people and organizations, with a specific focus for those already involved with Lean and 6 Sigma. Bob has reached step 31 by now and hopefully will continue adding steps soon.
8. Take a class at the university, or even go the whole way and get a certification or degree. For example, Dr. James Holt holds classes and has a full certification program at WSU, that are also available as web courses. There are other US universities with Theory of Constraints focus, such as the University of Tennessee. Internationally you can find programs in Poland, Ukrain, Colombia, Taiwan, South Africa, India and more. Many other Universities offer only single courses on the subject.
9. Dr. Goldratt's blog is a great place after you've picked up the basics, full of "golden nuggets" and extensions, it is in Theory of Constraints jargon and a novice could easily get lost. Once you're up to speed, though, it is the place to be.
10. Goal Systems International, a Theory of Constraints consulting firm with some of the biggest names, has very good topic specific articles in the "papers" section of their web site

Great learning source for Thinking Process

I've just found this great tutorial of TP. It's great because it uses real examples along the technical and theoretical material. This is great to make the learning process accessible for both the "learn then do" crowd and the "learn by doing" crowd. I've only skeemed this one, as I'm BMT as it is (taking time off from other tasks because I've run out of concentration), but I'm certain it's a keeper.

The source is agilecoach.net. I am not really sure who wrote the tutorial, but looking for the right name to thank, I also found this terrific EC presentation which added to my understanding of conflicts - did you know there are 3 types of conflicts? 

Anyways, I'm naming agilecoach.net a gold-digger's paradise – lot's of treasures, not to clear at first sight. Happy digging!