The first two principles are inspired by the words of Isaac Newton: "nature is absolutely simple and consistent with itself", while the tools of thought derive from the methods of maieutics and that is the art of leading the interlocutor to reach the clear awareness of the truth (through questions), described in Plato's dialogues.
The first principle of Convergence: "The most complex system is the simplest to manage", is called the intrinsic simplicity "Inherent Simplicity". The principle is based on the fact that the more the system is interconnected, the lower are its degrees of freedom, so you have to manage fewer "levers" to control the entire system.
The second principle of coherence: “In nature there are no conflicts”. Scientifically it means that if two interpretations of a natural phenomenon are in conflict with each other, then one or both of the hypotheses are wrong. Therefore, when two functions, strategies or policies are in conflict in an Organization or in a Firm, then the assumptions leading to the conflict must contain at least one erroneous assumption.
The third principle of Respect is based on the consideration that "People are not stupid". And even if people do things that seem stupid, their behavior is still provoked by some reason.
Going into the merits of the reasons, sharing the assumptions that lead to the common goal, and discarding those that go in the opposite direction to the goal: we proceed to motivate and involve people to collaborate towards the achievement of the objectives and the improvement of the Company.
The company is a unisystem, that is, a set of interconnected and interdependent components and processes that combine to transform something in input into something in output, to achieve a common goal. The managers of the company, of the system, decide on the objectives and how to achieve them.
To build a path and pursue objectives it is necessary to undertake changes, and therefore to give a direction, and to describe a path.
The management of an organization, basic steps:
The management of an organization, to manage and govern a problem correctly, must know it well. The three phases that help to get to know an organization, a company, a system well:
If all the improvements come from a change, we cannot admit the opposite and that is that every change leads to an improvement. The questions to ask when organizational changes are introduced are:
The software systems that support the Material Requirement Planning models, from the seventies brought great technological innovation to companies.
But how did companies do it before the MRP?
There were many people doing the calculations of material requirements by hand to fulfill customer orders. MRP was very successful, and some companies got better and some didn't. To obtain an improvement it was necessary to be aware of the limitations induced by the manual calculation of the needs. Hence, companies that knew the limitations they had prior to the introduction of MRP have improved.
The real limitation was not the calculation speed, but the frequency. Those companies that have replaced people with software, but have continued to do the MRP every 15-20 days as they did before hand, have not improved, because they have continued to apply the previous procedures with the only difference that they have faster calculations. They only saved on personnel costs, but they did not improve customer service or solve the problem of lead times (production times and product delivery).
With the new system it was possible to calculate the needs even every day, but the habit and the consolidated procedures were not changed.
The real limitation was the frequency of calculation.
When a change is introduced, and therefore an innovation is introduced, the way in which the organization has adapted to the constraints that have been removed with the change must also change.
Another critical aspect of change management is that a systemic approach to improvement, to effectively manage a system, it must be managed all together.
Most systems and organizations have inherent simplicity, but interrelationships must be managed.
Three elements are needed to understand any system: the Objective, the Physical Model and the Logical Model.
There can be many objectives for a company: profit, customer satisfaction, reliable suppliers, improvement of internal collaboration etc ...
The real goal, however, is profit, but how? and what does it mean? how do i measure the goal?
Often the main objective is either unclear or not shared by the whole company, and this is a big problem.
Profit and satisfaction are necessary for each other, one must anyway defiset a measurable goal.
How do we measure customer satisfaction? It is not simple, it is often subjective. Same thing if we want to measure employee satisfaction, we risk building an unreliable measure. In the case of profit, just take the last line of the income statement and the measure is objective, simple and simple.
This is the goal: simple, clear and measurable.
If we think of a production line, we can represent the physical model with a sequence of stations, a sequence of machines each dedicated to perform a specific operation. Each machine, each station can be characterized by a number that identifies the production capacity, so that we can highlight the weak link if we want to increase its capacity.
In the logical model we want to illustrate the cause-effect correlations, in such a way as to highlight the problems of undesirable effects, or to increase / decrease any effects by acting on the causes. This type of model is used as a tool in the management of quality systems, for example, to trace the causes of unwanted qualitative effects and to take corrective actions to remove the cause.
All business processes have the goal of efficiency in process performance, but the inherent variability of any process leads to results that are sometimes not in line with what is expected.
For example, if a person lives 10 km from the airport and has to take a plane at 16 pm, what time must he leave home to avoid missing the plane? It depends on the traffic at that time, on the road conditions, on the means of transport chosen, on its reliability, but also on random events… The time needed can depend on numerous variables.
Similarly, in the production processes there are process variables such as Materials, Methods, Machines, Environment ...
To represent the dispersion of the results, a Gaussian curve is used, which represents the distribution of probabilities. The more restricted is the variability with respect to the target, the more the Gaussian is narrow. There are several tools to reduce variability, such as Six Sigma.
The theory of constraints is not in contrast with other methods such as Six Sigma, but suggests applying it by focusing investments, avoiding the risk of results that are not proportionate to the money spent and the efforts put into a project.
In many realities Six Sigma has been applied together with Lean Thinking, focusing efforts and investments through a TOC project
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