TOC in The Journal of Corporate Renewal

My friend, Noreen Kelly of Trust Matters, sent me a copy of the August 2007 issue of The Journal of Corporate Renewal from the Turnaround Management Association.  In it, there is Process Improvement Tools Can Add Value in Turnarounds (members only) by Steve Beeler.  (Handily Steve Beeler has a copy of the article on his website.)

The article lists Theory of Constraints, Lean, Industrial Engineering, Value Stream Mapping, process simulations, and enterprise profit models as helpful process improvement tools.  At the top of the list is Theory of Constraints, as it can guide the selection of other improvements.

This article isn't an in-depth study of any of these methods.  Rather, it is an introduction and it shows how they relate to one another and appropriate places where each might be used.

Interestingly, Figure 4 should look very familiar to people who have done TOC simulator training.  It's the classic "sim 10" example that is used during training.