A large contingent of upper- and mid-level managers has been educated in the use of the TOC TP, as has the CEO and some members of the Board of Directors. In 2009, the use of S&T trees was initiated to crystallize, condense, and communicate key strategic initiatives.

What Has Made TOC Work at First Solar?

There are a number of reasons why the holistic implementation of TOC has been successful and sustainable: TOC is simply a means to an end and not an end itself. The greatest benefit lies in creating a Throughput-driven culture, supported by tools that make this a living capability.

TOC provided a central concept around which a strong Throughput-driven corporate culture could be built.

TOC had strong buy-in and long-term support from both the CEO and the President.

Extensive exposure to the concepts and contrast of Cost World and Throughput World-this is a strong "tribal" motivator10 Use of the tools in all possible areas helped define and build processes and systems around the concepts.

Over time, success helped to build confidence in management's capability, which drove an increasing virtuous loop.

Small, successful initial applications built trust and confidence.

Critical mass and bench strength in the TOC implementation team perpetuates the Throughput culture.

Recommendations and Summary

The aim of this chapter was to share important insights and experiences gained from both an internal and external TOC expert's perspective as well as a generic process for implementing and sustaining TOC in a holistic way within both the private and public sectors.

With every implementation of TOC, whether done in one part of an organization (locally) or holistically (synchronized implementation in all the parts), we have the opportunity to learn both what worked and what did not work. One has to be careful to learn from each experience, but even more careful that one learns the right lessons.

Recommended Good Practices for Implementing TOC Holistically

The recommendations that follow are lessons learned that we consider key success factors or simply generic good practices for top management, internal and external TOC experts and TOC champions derived from experience with what did and did not work in practice.

Use the TOC 5FS, TP Roadmap, and S&T Tree

The best11 place to start with a holistic implementation of TOC is to gain top management understanding and long-term support. This is best achieved by education in the principles and application of the generic TOC concepts or "gestalt." Without a deep and visceral understanding and acceptance of the value of a Throughput-driven win-win-win culture, all else is short-lived. Once achieved, the next step would be to gain consensus on how to do just that by getting all senior management (and other key stakeholders) to contribute to constructing a business/organization strategy using TOC's 5FS (applied to the organization as a whole) and the TP Roadmap to better leverage system constraints.

The S&T tree format can then be used to develop the full analysis (the what, how, and why related to each proposed change as well as the level and sequence of implementation). Experience has shown that the S&T tree is an excellent communication tool to validate with and get consensus from stakeholders on the necessary and sufficient changes, contributions, and implementation sequence.

In cases where a generic S&T tree exists that closely fits the organization, the focus should be on validating the core assumptions and making the necessary modifications to match the specific situation at that organization. In either case, the S&T tree can also be used to plan, execute, and monitor the execution.

Changing Behaviors/Paradigms with Stories and Games

Changing behaviors requires a change in basic assumptions or paradigms through which we view the world. We recommend the following approaches for stakeholders to challenge and change their assumptions and decision-making framework.

Using the five (traditional) limiting versus five (TOC) enabling paradigms (Table 16-1) to show that it is the way we deal with constraints, complexity, conflicts, uncertainty, and bad behaviors/choices (rather than these challenges) that will determine our success (or failure).

Using the Throughput versus Cost World analogy to provide a simple, yet powerful explanation of the change in focus. Instead of incrementally improving the system by reducing costs everywhere, focusing on increasing Throughput (flow) through identifying and removing system-level constraints is much more effective.

Use the multitasking game (Projects), dice game (Operations), P&Q game (Finance), and other TOC/systems-approachbased simulation games. These provide an effective and efficient (and fun) method for showing the potential gain in performance if one were to stop using local optima rules and start using TOC/system constraint focused rules. It also shows how frequently it is that assumptions block this potential, rather than the lack of resources or starting conditions, which are usually blamed for poor performance.

Important Role of a TOC Champion Supported by TOC Experts

For a company to start a TOC implementation, especially a holistic implementation of TOC, there must be an internal TOC champion who is well respected within the organization and supported by top management, with a critical mass of internal TOC supporters and (internal/external) TOC application experts. Internal TOC champions are people who are willing to take personal risks to move their organization, have adequate knowledge of the essence of TOC (what Goldratt calls the "gestalt"), and the ability to convince and motivate others (and off-course someone that will practice what they preach).

They relentlessly drive the culture change and ensure implementation support. We have observed that many TOC champions have limited success when they lack sufficient internal support, access to subject matter experts, or lukewarm top management support.

Finding and Leveraging Pockets of Excellence

Pockets of excellence exist in virtually all difficult or complex environments-whether it be in the private sector organizations that face the challenge of achieving exponential growth or simply surviving or the public sector organizations that face massive budget and resource constraints.

Every institution has its unique set of irrational and difficult constraints (Collins, 2006, 31), yet some make a leap while others, facing the same challenges, do not. Excellence or greatness is largely a matter of choice (where to focus) and discipline (taking the right actions and stopping the wrong actions).

In many cases, pockets of excellence can act as catalysts to identify what changes in rules/conditions contributed to stellar performance and possibly making the exception the rule.

Importance of a Simple Mechanism for Making Holistic Decisions

As long as decisions are still made based on many wrong assumptions engrained within traditional cost accounting, management decisions will continue to be in conflict with what is needed to support a holistic implementation of TOC. Implementing TA and specifically the mechanism to judge all decisions based on their impact on T, I, and OE is a simple and effective way to achieve better, faster global decisions at all levels. TA can help prevent devastating mistakes in decisions related to judging the financial performance of the organization as a whole or business units/departments, judging make/buy decisions, judging product/market/customer/project contribution, judging investments, and making pricing or budget decisions.

Using and Encouraging the Use of TOC's Thinking Processes

Management and employees face many challenges every day that could cause them to lose focus; challenges such as finding win-win solutions to day-to-day or even chronic conflicts, having to deal with half-baked solutions, dealing with firefighting due to gaps between responsibility and authority, dealing with resistance to change, and how to motivate and inspire teams to achieve ambitious targets. The TOC TP such as the positive and negative branches, conflict cloud/dual conflict cloud, PRT, and S&T trees provide managers with practical thinking process tools to help deal with these challenges. Acceptance is assured when managers are seen to be using this capability.

Importance of Roadmaps, Follow-Up, and Follow-Through

Getting people to take action is not a triviality. Appreciation of a body of knowledge such as TOC will not necessarily lead to a decision and action. The overriding factor in most of our decisions is not the expected benefits but the risks involved.

To mitigate the risks it is vital to have or provide a well-crafted, clear, and credible road-map backed by sufficient internal and external support. A well-structured S&T with valid assumptions provides a clear vision and garners strong consensus to action.

Unless there is follow-up and follow-through by leaders, the required actions either will not be taken or at best will not be sustained. Lack of follow-up and follow-through is rapidly interpreted that something is no longer a priority.

Importance of Aligning IT Systems with TOC Rules

Do not confuse simple with easy. Even simple rules can be difficult to implement, especially within large and complex environments. IT systems such as Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) play an important role in helping organizations implement, apply, and sustain new Throughput-driven rules. They can help alter planning, execution, feedback, and control by identifying leverage points for continuous improvement. One way to ensure full alignment between the organizational growth/business strategy and the changes needed within the ERP and other IT systems is to use S&T as a tool to define and obtain agreement on detailed IT system changes required to support a new growth strategy. An example of the benefits of this approach was shown in the "One Simple ABB" case study where S&T was used to define and obtain agreement on the detailed ERP system (SAP) changes to support and implement a set of simple TOC planning, execution, and continuous improvement rules within a large number of factories (Barnard, Rajaniemi, and Nordstrom, 2009).

Continuous Improvement and Auditing

Frequently, the business environment changes or reality proves (despite the best possible logical analysis) that one or more of the assumptions of necessity or sufficiency or inherent potential were simply not true. This calls for constant re-evaluation of assumptions about inherent potential, the system constraint that limits us from unlocking this potential, and the necessary and sufficient conditions needed to support this decision. Chapter 15 of this Handbook provides a detailed description of designing and implementing a TOC-based continuous improvement and auditing mechanism and culture needed to support a holistic TOC implementation and to prevent or at least minimize typical management errors of omission, commission, detection, and correction.

Become the Change You Want to See

Our final recommendation to those considering the implementation of TOC in their organizations, especially to those struggling to get support or consensus, is simply to follow the advice of Mahatma Gandhi-"Become the change you want to see in the world."

Start using the TOC TP tools and logistical applications in your area, and soon it will spread to other areas, sometimes well beyond the original area of influence.

Summary