Reaching The Goal: How Managers Improve a Services Business Using Goldratt's Theory of Constraints

by John Arthur Ricketts

“There is no doubt that this is a truly original and groundbreaking work in applying the Theory of Constraints. I run a services company and learned some things about the services business. Anyone involved in large services companies needs to look at what John is proposing. I will definitely quote this material frequently.”

Chad Smith, Managing Partner, Constraints Management Group

“The information presented in this book is badly needed by service providers who struggle to balance supply and demand with their resources.”

Carol A. Ptak, CFPIM, CIRM

“The techniques that John brings to light in this book are the bridge from the vision of Dr. Goldratt’s work to the successful implementation in a range of services firms.”

From the Foreword by Erik Bush, Vice President, IBM Global Services

Discover the powerful Theory of Constraints (TOC), and use it to drive continuous performance improvement in any services organization Identify the hidden constraints that are limiting your organization, and manage or eliminate them Use TOC to improve the way you manage resources, projects, processes, finance, marketing, and sales Determine whether your organization faces an internal or external constraint, manage that constraint accordingly, and anticipate where the next constraint will arise Release latent capacity shrouded by common business practices Simplify processes that have grown unmanageably complex Optimize your enterprise as a whole rather than suboptimizing individual business units Get buy-in to fundamental changes in strategy, tactics, and operations

Managing services is extremely challenging, and traditional “industrial” management techniques are no longer adequate. In Reaching the Goal, Dr. John Arthur Ricketts presents a breakthrough management approach that embraces what makes services different: their diversity, complexity, and unique distribution methods.

Ricketts draws on Eli Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints (TOC), one of this generation’s most successful management methodologies...thoroughly adapting it to the needs of today’s professional, scientific, and technical services businesses. He reveals how to identify the surprising constraints that limit your organization’s performance, execute more effectively within those constraints, and then loosen or even eliminate them.

This book’s relentlessly practical techniques reflect several years of advanced IBM research and consulting with enterprise clients. Step-by-step, Ricketts shows how to apply them throughout your most crucial business functions...from project management to finance, process improvement to sales and marketing.

Whatever your role in improving service delivery, processes, or profitability, this book gives you the tools to reach your goals...and go beyond them

Identify, manage, and overcome your key constraints

Five steps to uncovering and addressing the real obstacles to improved performance

Optimize core business functions, one step at a time

Improve the way you manage resources, projects, processes, finance, and marketing

Implement TOC rapidly and effectively

Get buy-in, deploy infrastructure, and provide the right IT support?

Genres: Business, Management, Nonfiction

404 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2003

Reviews

[Paul LaFontaine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came to this book having read all of Goldratt's books and having a basic knowledge of the concepts. I credit the author with trying to bring the Theory of Constraints to the service industry. This powerful way of thinking can be put into a really useful manual for each sector and good on him for taking a crack at it.

In this case, the author's writing reads like a technical manual written in 1937 and makes the text some unnecessarily hard sledding. There is a plethora of made up notation (ie TAs, CAg, CAs, DBRs, etc) without an index and as a reader I was continually going back to find what acronym was referring to what to try and decipher he was talking about. The principle behind the Theory of Constraints is to make things plain, simple and useable and the author misses that point entirely. Much of the text is made up of generalizations that amount to self-evident (and self referential) statements like "profit is good because increasing profit is what is good."

I do credit him for the work. He could have done a much better job of presenting an interesting case of how the Theory of Constraint's is useful in the service sector.

[Stein Karlsen]

Not directly applicable to my position, but filled with examples and explanations.

[Daniel Bloom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. Left me with more questions than answers

[Vinny M · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was not as practical as I hoped it to be. It was fine but wouldn't recommend it to someone wanting to apply TOC to service businesses

[Yuval Yeret · Rating 3 out of 5]

I especially liked the Replenishment for Services chapter and how it brings ToC to the world of professional services people assignment and how to deal with "On Demand" services while still being good employers/corporates.

[JD Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brilliant information, not a simple read. More of a technical read, so this is a book for people who are serious about getting good information.

[Jack Vinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2...