SM5.4 TOC Drum, Buffer, Rope Optimisation Techniques
The Theory of Constraints (TOC) demonstrates the importance of finding and managing the constraint in your business.
This article covers three of the major techniques to optimise any production system around its constraint.
SM2.3 80/20 and the Theory of Constraints (TOC)
This is 12Faces’s equivalent of Godzilla meets the Hulk! In our language it is the mixing of the 80/20 Rule, which promises up to 16x growth and the Theory of Constraints (TOC) approach, which describes the most liberating aspect of your production line.
SM2.4 80/20 Decision Making
Smaller business operators are constantly making decisions – large and small. The 80/20 Rule suggests some tools that might help with faster, better, smarter decisions.
SM2.0 80/20 Principle – 16 Times More Productive
Introducing the 80/20 Principal The 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs or effort usually lead to a majority of the results, outputs or rewards. Taken literally, this means that 80 percent of what you achieve in your job comes from 20 percent of the time spent. This implies that: 80% of your […]
How Kaizen Leads to Continuous Incremental Improvement
Most improvement is an incremental process. It is rare to get something completely right the first time so, over time, we improve parts of the system so as to continue to improve the whole. A Japanese word for incremental improvement is “Kaizen”. Read this article for insights into incremental improvement of your business. Incremental improvement, […]
How Kanban Improves Work Flow
Kanbans are a tool for structuring how work flows into the work-in-progress queues so that workers do not get overloaded and can use their time most effectively. Kanbans, and variations on them, are widely used in software projects (e.g. Scrum and Agile) and manufacturing (e.g. Lean and Six Sigma). Blue Belt
SM5.0 Theory of Constraints (TOC) and your Bottlenecks
The Theory of Constraints (TOC) has probably had more impact on our prizewinning business than any other management gem! We first heard of it when reading that Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon, required all his managers to read the book that introduced ToC – The Goal. Bezos has done OK so must be something in […]
How the Plan/Do/Check/Act (PDCA) Cycle Builds Important Routines
The business world is full of uncertainty. Many managers cross their fingers, build the planned addition to their business in its entirety, or their start-up, then launch it and pray. The most common outcome from this approach is – failure or, at best, mediocre success. Starting with the auto industry and then moving to the start-up industry, smart managers are dramatically reducing their risk by doing a series of experiments that let them “fail fast” and cheaply if their idea does not have legs. This approach substantially speeds up the migration to a profitable new avenue for the business. Learn the process of the PDCA Cycle This is a Yellow Belt (Introductory) article.
Manage Workflow and the Local Optima Problem
It is a very widely held belief in managing workflow for business that each station in a production line should be working as hard as it can in order to maximise its efficiency. This might be a car assembly line or an accountant’s office processing tax returns using several different stages in the accounting process. […]
Take Advantage of Agile / Scrum / Kanban to Increase Productivity
In a smaller business there is always plenty to do and many demands on a managers most limited resource; time. Often the owners time is the major bottleneck on the growth of the business (see the introductory article to Theory of Constraints). Plenty of other businesses have struggled with prioritising time before you and several techniques that are very similar have evolved. The three best known of these are named Agile / Scrum / Kanban. Various references cite improvements in team productivity ranging from 25% to 300% by using these methods. This article introduces these concepts and a way of using a free software app named Trello to manage the process. A mix of Yellow and Blue Belt introductory material.