During the CAS2012 I had the chance to participate in a workshop by Masa K. Maeda on the five focusing steps of the Theory of Constraints.
The part of the workshop I valued most was a completely hands-on game, and it was incredibly fun!, and it was an effective way to transmit how we can apply the TOC to understand and adjust our continuous improvement process in Agile teams.
TOC is based on the premise that the throughput of a goal-oriented system is limited by at least one constraint. Only by increasing flow through the constraint we can increase the overall throughput.
Assuming the goal of a system and its measurements have been defined, the five steps are:
- Identify the system’s constraint that prevents the organization from obtaining a higher throughput.
- Exploit the identified constraint to get the most out of it.
- Subordinate everything else to the above decision to support it.
- Elevate the system’s constraint making other major changes needed to break it.
- Repeat all the previous steps, do not allow inertia to cause a system’s constraint.
The game consisted in 4 iterations of 260 seconds (representing a year of working days) in which each team of five people formed a production chain of paper airplanes. At the end of each iteration, we made changes to the production process based on the first four focusing steps, then we analyzed the production throughput. (in this case, how much money we have made selling good airplanes, or lost making bad or incomplete airplanes).
I am looking forward to try this out in our company soon!
