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.
