William Hoefle, of The Goal Insitute, has an interesting TOC story (or 10) to tell. Let's get straight to it.
Q1: Hi William, Can you tell us a little about yourself, both professionally and personally? What bought you to TOC? What kept you with it? That sort of thing.
Hi Clarke,
I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of your TOCThinkers site.
First of all, from a personal perspective, I live in Greensboro, NC with my wife, Amy, my son Myles (ten) and my daughter Sloane (eight). I serve on the Board of Directors of the Greensboro Opera Company as well as the Advisory Board of a number of companies locally and abroad. I have a BS in Finance and an MBA (with honors) from Indiana University, and have served on the Associate Faculty in the Department of Business and Economics for Indiana University. When I am not working I am an avid golf and tennis player.
I joined the Avraham Y. Goldratt Institute (AGI) in 1993 working for Dr. Donn Novotny (the person upon whom the character "Alex Rogo" was based in the book The Goal), one of the founding partners of AGI. Most of my implementation and teaching work there was centered on CCPM (both education and implementation) and I was the AGI lead on our comprehensive, multi-site, multi-project implementations of CCPM for companies like Seagate, Lucent, Medtronic, Herman Miller, and several other smaller (and less well known) organizations.
In 2002 Dr. Novotny and I left AGI to form The Goal Institute, Inc. (www.thegoalinstitute), which is focused on applied research, implementation and executive education in the field of TOC.
I'm a Jonah's Jonah and a Certified TOC Expert in all TOCICO categories. I'm also one of the original members of the TOCICO, having been in attendance at the Atlanta, GA meeting with Eli Goldratt where it was formed. I am also a member of the Turnaround Management Association, APICS, and the National Speakers Association.
I've been fortunate enough to have been sent to Latin America, Singapore, London, Paris and Italy to give talks or lead implementation work on CCPM (among other TOC topics). My most highly requested speaking topic centers on my paper "Project Management: From Art to Science with the Theory of Constraints".
I'm the Managing Director of Alex Rogo Ventures, a turn-around management / venture capital firm whose charter is to "Create Value through Revitalization" - utilizing TOC (among other best practices).
Having a "traditional" business degree (under and grad) has compelled me to stay with TOC. In some cases, I was learning TOC approaches side by side with conventional approaches. This didn't always garner me favor with my graduate school professors, although it did make for excellent class room discussions! I did my Masters Thesis on "Why Standard Cost Accounting should no longer be used in Manufacturing". I received good marks along with odd looks (given we were the 8th highest ranked graduate business program in the country at the time, imagine my disappointment with how far behind the university truly was). A traditional business degree (particularly the MBA) did, however, assist in my ability to "build the bridge" between conventional thinking and a TOC approach.
My personal objective is to secure the future of US industry - and I center many of my talks, seminars and consulting emphasis on small, regional manufacturers (I focus a lot on the Carolina area) to show them how they can compete globally - primarily re-working their manufacturing, sales and accounting systems.
