This Focused Performance Weblog is a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project Management and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes). If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Small Revolutionary Events in the Larger Scheme of Things -- The confluence of my earlier post today and Joe Ely's Learning about Lean piece on a kaizen event and the importance of seconds has just led me to one of those a-ha moments.
Kaizen is often touted as a process of continuous, incremental improvement.
But it's also often practiced in terms of "kaizen events."
From the larger system's viewpoint, it might be continuous. From the point of view of the process subjected to a kaizen event, not quite. At the granular level, it probably has quite a non-continuous impact.
hmmmm...Could it be the best of both worlds, continuous global improvement from a series of disruptive local events?
That, of course, assumes that the targets of the events and their results are related to enhancing the goals of the global system (in most cases, by alleviating constraints in the system). Contraint management (TOC) provides guidance on where to improve. Tools and activities like Lean, kaizen, Six Sigma provide the means to effect the improvement.
View Frank Patrick's profile
