TOC – Synchronised Supply Chain: A strong backbone for your lean-approach

The main foundations of lean are:

Elimination of Waste

Continuous improvement

Respect for humanity/stakeholders

Avoiding waste assumes there is not enough time or resources to do everything one dreams of doing, which is true now more than ever. It all comes down to applying (too) limited resources as goal oriented as possible. In TOC techniques, we start with the correct measurement of goals (throughput in Euros), and the impact of the ‘constraint’ on that goal. A constraint could be: a bottleneck, money, lack of the right skills, wrong decisions, …

When the focus goes towards the correct things, and there is a logical foundation and measurement, people quickly accept that it is a waste of money and time to improve ‘non-constraints’ at that very moment.

At the same time, the correct steering of constraints delivers the largest possible lever-effect, which immediately optimises the use of scarce resources (or prevents waste).

This is also true for excessive stocks, that can sometimes be produced from the positive concern of cost saving. This dilemma dissappears automatically with the application of TOC-SSC.

Just-In -Time delivery is also an automatic consequence of the synchronisation systems, while Kan-Bans can be replaced by dynamic buffermanagement.

Continuous improvement is no longer open ended, but a competitive necessity. With TOC-SSC, this is a positive effect of Buffer Management. This is a typical TOC technique that not only leads to low stocks with an optimal degree of service but starts anticipating disturbances thanks too imbedded analysis. The difference between a ‘waste’ and an important change is an automatic consequence of the way measurements are done.

Respect for the stakeholders uses mutual trust. This trust can only exist when all parties make decisions (and evaluations) based on the same criteria. TOC-SSC ensures that transparency and triggers the right signals, those that are the same for everyone. In a more complex (r virtual) supply chain, this is also true for the entire chain: “from China to the costumer”.