Q3 - Kevin Kohls

Q3. Was it difficult to market TOC and TIP within GM?

Well, it took about 15 years to get it to the “Tipping Point,” where terms like bottleneck and constraint became part of the everyday lexicon. In some ways it was easy, because there were many plants in the 90’s that were not making enough popular vehicles, like big trucks. GM understood how much money it stood to lose if those products didn’t reach customers. So we had internal customers who were motivated, lots of support from upper management, and the tools and knowledge to make it happen. We also had the dedicated team to do this work, so the usual obstacles of lack of budget and lack of headcount were eliminated.

In other ways, it was difficult – lots of conflict, a huge challenge to the traditional way of thinking, and we were seen to be in competitive with other programs, like TQM, GMS (lean), etc. We stumbled across a lot of skeletons buried in the backyard, so to speak. We also had to be the ones to say “the baby’s ugly” when it came down to demonstrating with data and analysis that a bottleneck was not performing as designed. I got kicked out of some of the finest plants in GM, only to be brought back the next day. Quite a ride.