Q5: What would you say is the most
significant difference seasoned practitioners would need to take into account
when working in services?
A5: You ask an important question, because services comprise the majority of developed economies, and services are the fastest-growing segment in developing economies. But the answer to your question depends on whether we’re talking about TOC practitioners or services practitioners, which still tend to be different groups. The good news for TOC practitioners is familiar TOC principles do apply in services. The better news is traditional TOC applications work just fine in services that resemble factories and warehouses, such as fast food, pharmacies, dry cleaners, and lawn care. The best news, however, is TOC applications can be adapted to work even in services that do not resemble factories or warehouses, such as Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services. TOC practitioners need to understand the unique challenges that service providers face in order to appreciate why the adaptations are necessary. And TOC practitioners will notice some new concepts for services enterprises, such as a third class of constraints that is neither internal nor external. On the other hand, services practitioners will find that TOC for Services provides fundamentally different ways to think about services. For instance, the notion that there may be just one constraint that governs what an entire enterprise can produce is as alien in services today as it was in manufacturing and distribution twenty-five years ago. For many services practitioners, however, the biggest hurdle to overcome is the misconception that optimizing every individual part of an enterprise automatically optimizes the enterprise as a whole. It doesn’t. Reaching the Goal addresses this and many other core problems that services practitioners face every day.
