I'm looking forward to reading the new TOC book by John Ricketts. It's called "Reaching The Goal: How Managers Improve a Services Business Using Goldratt's Theory of Constraints". I would have written that last sentence more elegantly if I'd known how to do a possessive apostrophe when someone's name ends in "s", btw.
The book won't be released for a few more weeks but you can search inside at Amazon.
In the meantime, John has kindly agreed to answer a few questions about himself and the book.
Here're the first two questions with more to follow:
Q1: What is your TOC background?
A1: I'm a "Jonah." For the benefit of people new to Theory of Constraints, Jonah is a former professor and consultant in the original TOC novel, The Goal, who teaches the central character, a factory manager, how to solve what appear to be unsolvable problems. As a practical matter, being a Jonah means I've completed TOC training and actively practice it. My involvement with TOC has taken me beyond its usual boundaries, however. I started my career in manufacturing, moved into information technology, and have been in the services field for a long time. So my career has taken me progressively away from the roots of TOC. As anyone who’s tried to apply TOC to services quickly discovers, however, the less a services business is like an industrial firm, the harder the traditional TOC applications are to apply. I was program manager for the introduction of TOC into IBM Global Services, and I remember vividly that it was impossible to make traditional TOC applications work on certain services problems. For instance, TOC does a terrific job of managing inventory in manufacturing and distribution businesses, but in a pure services business, there is no inventory. You can’t buy a haircut off the shelf. Thus, making TOC work in services requires more than a little innovation.
Q2: Can you tell us a little about your new book? Why were you inspired to write it? What's new about it compared to the existing literature? Who'll benefit from reading it?
A2: Reaching the Goal explains how we adapted TOC applications to work in Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, which is the services sector least like manufacturing and distribution. Of course, it also happens to be the sector where IBM Global Services would be located if it were an independent entity. Fortunately, a lot of what we discovered can be applied in other services sectors. And many product-based businesses are offering services around their products, so interest in services innovations extends beyond just services sectors. Compared to the existing TOC literature, which generally stays pretty close to its roots, this book is almost entirely devoted to TOC for services. I say “almost” because the first section reviews the fundamentals of traditional TOC as well as services. Thus, readers should be able to pick up this book even if they’ve never read anything about TOC or services before. On the other hand, even readers already familiar with TOC or services will find brand new material in the middle section, which covers management of resources, projects, processes, finances, marketing, and sales. The last section covers strategy, change, implementation, and technology for services from a TOC perspective. And there are endnotes throughout so readers can find their way into the existing TOC literature. In other words, anyone wrestling with management challenges will probably find something in this book that makes them go, “Hmmm.”
