The TOC Center Newsletter

“Is it really possible for ordinary companies—those without highly unique products or proprietary technologies—to realize dramatic growth in sales and profits?”

Accelerate! is about increasing your success, and not incrementally, but about making breakthroughs that take you and your company to a whole new plane of results. Breakthrough solutions are out there, and they're closer than most people think; that's because the largest leaps usually come from challenging the most fundamental concepts and assumptions people believe in. Think of Galileo and gravity... Before Galileo came along, no one dared to check whether a larger mass would fall faster to Earth than a smaller one, they just assumed it was true. Until Galileo asked the question and proved it wasn't true! In the process he changed dramatically the way we understand the basic forces and organization of the universe.

Okay, so Accelerate! won't shift the fundamental laws of physics, but it will challenge basic assumptions about businesses and organizations, and how they work. Through lively feature stories on companies who have already shattered past limitations, exciting articles from leading thinkers who are re-shaping how managers think and work, and timely news stories from across business, Accelerate! provides you with the inspiration and the insight to open your own new possibilities for growth.

The first edition of this FREE Journal is due out in June. You can read an excerpt from one of the exciting stories below.

Pre-register now to receive this exciting offering in your email 4 times a year. No credit card or financial information is needed and your personal information will be protected, and will never be sold. Click here to pre-register for the first issue now!

Robert Fox, President, TOC Center, Inc.

Accelerating Lean with TOC: one company's story

“MedDev” manufactures medical devices used in surgical theaters. Demand for one of their new product lines, “Aragon” was growing well beyond its forecast. Aragon is a line of machines MedDev sells for tens of thousands of dollars each. They assemble and test from parts made by suppliers. At the same time the company’s overall growth had created the need for the company to expand its operations by building a new manufacturing facility.

“MedDev” had been careful and thorough in applying Lean principles to the design and layout of the new facility. The flow design minimized material handling and movement, created focused work cells based on product lines, and made extensive use of Visual manufacturing principles. Work areas were laid out to minimize wasted movement with neat little storage bins close at hand to insure that all parts and supplies were readily available to the assemblers. There was a well-thought out replenishment flow to re-stock the shop-floor stocks from their on-site warehouse.

The Aragon production line was designed to produce about 20% more than the current demand. The problem was that it was not able to keep up with even the current orders, much less to build the safety stock required to facilitate spot sales. Due dates were routinely missed and they were running nearly 25% overtime in the area. Their people were getting burned out. On top of it there were frequent quality issues that required considerable re-work that reduced production and added to the late-shipment of orders. Further efforts to streamline the factory using Lean and Visual principles had produced some localized gains, but failed to change the overall business results. The company was jeopardizing a little more than $50,000 in orders per day by not keeping up.

The Breakthrough

MedDev had already achieved very nice results using TOC in its product development and technology transfer functions, reducing project durations 30% on average, while improving on-time delivery 80%. With these past successes and TOC’s long track record in production, stemming back to the 1984 publishing of The Goal, they wondered if TOC could help them accelerate production on the Aragon line.

Knowing that the company had already embraced the tools and principles of Lean and Visual manufacturing the first step was to ground the leadership and the shop-floor team in the overarching principles of TOC. Focusing these powerful tools with TOC had never failed before to produce extra-ordinary results in a very short period of time...

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