The New Beginning Part 5

Part 5 is a continuation of my blog series on Matt Hutcheson and my new book, The New Beginning. This book is written as a business novel and is a sequel to my last book, The Secret to Maximizing Profitability.

 In Chapter 13, entitled The Expanded Case Study at Simpson Water Heaters, Tom begins by discussing the value of performance metrics and defines them as feedback mechanisms that tells a company how well they’re performing.  Tom then completes the case study presented in the previous chapter, by inserting target levels for a company’s Goal, Critical Success Factors and many of the Necessary Conditions.  The case study company then goes through an assessment of their company and then Tom describes how to insert various solutions at the base of the Goal Tree that should resolve most ot the issues facing the company in question.

 In Chapter 14, entitled Maximo’s Improvement Plan, Tom sets up a meeting at Maximo to review the individual Goal Trees from each hospital.  The team from Maximo Oncology Hospital presents their Goal Tree and Tom is impressed, especially with their use of lead and lag measures. The same team then presents their assessment results and completely surprises Tom by explaining that Maximo has decided to use the same Goal Tree at all of their hospitals. Tom then presents a healthcare case study involving a hospital that dealt with a STEMI type heart attack that impresses everyone in attendance.  Tom then instructs the team on how to insert improvement initiatives onto the base of their Goal Tree.  He finishes the discussion by explaining how to use several improvement tools, which includes a new tool, the Interference Diagram.

 In Chapter 15, entitled, More Training at Maximo, Tom introduces the team to Drum Buffer Rope, which includes the basic thinking behind how it works.  He explains that organizations must focus on the system as a whole, rather than isolated parts of it.  He goes into detail on what a system is and why it’s very important to think in terms of systems.  Tom then briefly describes variation and how it can negatively impact any organization. He goes into detail summarizing Goldratt’s Five Focusing Steps as well as the basics of Drum Buffer Rope.  Tom then describes three different types of DBR which are traditional DBR, Simplified DBR and Multiple Drum Buffer Rope.  It is the concept of M-DBR that he believes Maximo should pursue and then schedules another meeting at Maximo.

 In Chapter 16, entitled Simpson Water Heater’s Goal Tree, before leaving their facility the last time, Tom had instructed Matt Maloney, the Plant Manager, to lead a team to create their own Goal Tree.  When Tom arrived in the conference room to hear about Simpson’s Goal Tree, he saw it on the screen in front of him.  The team began presenting, but started with a review of their performance metrics, which were dreadful to say the least, especially with a negative profit margin.  The team then presented their completed Goal Tree with each entity tying directly into their performance metrics.  They then presented their assessment and listed two potential improvement initiatives.  The team then presents another assessment of what they believed would happen if they successfully implemented both of the improvement initiatives.  Based upon their implementation they then presented a future look at their performance metrics.  Tom was impressed and decided to contact the other three portfolio companies for an update to their metrics.

Bob Sproull