New Book Part 3

How’s your improvement effort working for you? If you’re like many companies, you’ve invested lots of money on improvement training, but you’re not seeing enough of your investment hitting the bottom line. Like any other investment, you expected a fast and acceptable return on investment (ROI), but it just isn’t happening, or at least not fast enough to suit you or your board of directors. Maybe your investment was in Six Sigma, and you’ve trained hundreds of people to become Yellow, Green and Black Belts, and maybe even a few Master Black Belts? Maybe you’ve invested a large sum of money training people on Lean Manufacturing and have several Lean Senseis? Or maybe you’ve gone the Lean Six Sigma route? So why aren’t you seeing an acceptable return on investment? You know improvements are happening, because you’ve seen all of the improvement reports. But you’re just not seeing the return on investment that you expected, or at least hoped for.

I too have experienced this dilemma early in and throughout my career. So, early in my career, I performed an analysis of both failed and successful improvement initiatives. What I found changed my approach to improvement forever. In Chapter 1 of my new book, I discuss what I discovered and it was all about focus and leverage. By knowing where to focus my improvement efforts, I was transformed.  In this chapter (and others), we’re going to demonstrate what the Theory of Constraints (TOC) is and exactly how TOC can work for you.  We’re going to show you how to use the power of TOC, to truly jump-start your improvement efforts. Better yet, we’re going to help you turn all of those training dollars (or whatever currency you use) into immediate profits, and then show you how to sustain your efforts over the long haul.

If you’re like many companies, there seems to be a rush to run out and start improvement projects without really considering the bottom-line impact of the projects selected. Some companies even develop a performance metric that measures the number of on-going projects and attempt to drive the number higher and higher. Instead of developing a strategically focused and manageable plan, many companies, in effect, try to “solve world hunger.”  They do this instead of focusing on the areas of greatest payback. 

Across-the-board cost cutting initiatives are pretty much standard for many businesses. Companies spend inordinate amounts of money on external consultants and in-house training programs, and then focus on ways to reduce costs. Focusing solely on cost reduction is an absolute mistake! So, if this misguided focus isn’t right, then what is the right approach? In Chapter 1, we’ll demonstrate why this focus is misguided, but more importantly, where the right focus should be.

Bob Sproull