For those of you who follow my blog on a regular basis, you have no doubt seen my postings based upon my second book, The Ultimate Improvement Cycle - Maximizing Profits Through the Integration of Lean, Six Sigma and the Theory of Constraints. In this book I demonstrated how I have integrated these three improvement methodologies into a single method, with each part playing a different role. I did so by creating three concentric rings, one for TOC, one for Lean and one for Six Sigma. In the past several months, I have modified these rings slightly to reflect different thinking on my part. In this posting I want to share this new set of visuals that I have updated. In future posts, I'll discuss some of the changes I made.
The first set of concentric rings is intended to reflect the three integrated improvement methods with their milestones. In the center you will see the milestones for the Theory of Constraints which reflect Goldratt's 5 Focusing steps that he popularized in his and Jeff Cox's blockbuster best seller, The Goal. I located it as the innermost ring because I believe it is the nucleus for this integrated methodology. In other words, I see TOC as the defining element for improvement.
Both Lean and Six Sigma are an integral part of why this improvement method works as well as it does. TOC by itself will not identify and reduce waste and variation and Lean and Six Sigma will not identify the focal point for improvement. All three of these improvement initiatives add to the success of any improvement initiative.
In the second set of concentric rings, I have laid out some of the tools and actions that I recommend to accomplish your improvement efforts at each step. I want to emphasize that these are not the only tools that can be used, but rather the ones that I believe are the most effective.
As I mentioned earlier, in future posts I will explain some of the changes I have made to the concentric rings and the reasoning behind them.
Bob Sproull
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