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Probabilistic Project Scheduling = Shorter Project Lead Times
Probabilistic project scheduling uses an understanding of the variation in project tasks and the project environment (project risks) to make a quantitative prediction of a range of project outcomes....
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Theory of Constraints Lean Six Sigma – Integrating Tools for Big Results
Here’s a short clip from my presentation last month. Many organizations struggle with their continuous improvement (CI) efforts; achieving real bottom line results, whether in cost savings or increased...
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Why is it so hard to get buy in to continuous improvement?
At the heart of continuous improvement is the matter of change. In order to improve the process, we must change it. However, not every change results in an improvement. We would not bother to make a...
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A “Typical” Theory of Constraints Implementation
You’ve read all of the books on the Theory of Constraints and heard of the terrific successes other achieve with this method. You may be wondering what a real implementation looks like. I’ve led...
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How to Double Your Profits with TLS Theory of Constraints Lean Six Sigma
Well, maybe you won’t double them, maybe you’ll do better! Many organizations struggle with their continuous improvement (CI) efforts; achieving real bottom line results, whether in cost savings or...
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Theory of Constraints Lean Six Sigma Podcast
Last week, I did an interview with Joe Dager of Business 901 on the topic of the integration of Theory of Constraints with Lean and Six Sigma. We discuss how it all fits together and the biggest...
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Theory of Constraints Supply Chain Management
With all these smart people working on supply chain management initiatives, why are there so few examples of real successful SCM improvements? Why, if management spends millions of dollars on supply...
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Throughput Accounting; Improving Decision Making
Today, companies are focused on increasing throughput – the rate at which a company generates money through sales. They want to expand products, customer base, markets, and so on. They want to grow as...
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Pit Crews cut final assembly time in half, giving FMC Technologies “The...
We did a very successful Theory of Constraints Implementation a while back, that incorporated a wide variety of approaches. Critical Chain Project Management Process Reengineering Supply Chain...
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How to Build a Reliable Delivery Process
Despite the advances in information technology and systems, most plants manage the process of prioritizing and managing the production of customer orders as if it were an art, approaching the task as a...
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Theory of Constraints Tapped to Accelerate BP’s Gulf of Mexico Cleanup
The process helped BP save more than $200 million by identifying key measurements and planning the bottleneck into the operation. Read More
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Pinnacle Strategies Wins 2012 M&A Award for USA Project Management...
Pinnacle Strategies, focused on delivering bottom-line improvements to businesses around the world, has been awarded the prestigious 2012 Acquisition International M&A Award in the category of USA...
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Pinnacle Strategies Teams With SAS to Deliver Breakthrough Business Process...
Pinnacle Strategies, a leading provider of services that increase shareholder value by improving project management, business excellence, and supply chain operations, announced today that it has...
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Visual Project Management
We’ve been playing with a new concept in project management. This new approach blends lean concepts, visual management, and theory of constraints. It’s a visual project management process, with a...
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Pinnacle Strategies Names International Operations Management Executive as...
Internationally recognized business management expert to lead new Oslo-based EMEA office Pinnacle Strategies today announced that Christoph Lenhartz, former COO of VISTEM GmbH & Co. KG and...
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Mass-producing Frustration: Why “Good Planning” Often Leads to Failed Projects
In engineering offices and construction trailers all over the world, promising projects suffer delays, cost overruns and missed output projections. In response, the collective finger of blame points to...
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Make the Invisible Visible – Look for “The Drum”
What is the first thing to do to increase output when you need more, yesterday? Often, when output needs to increase, we learn that this heightened sense of urgency creates rushed decisions and frantic...
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Rebalance Resources to Maximize Flow
Knowing what (and where) the drum is for your process does not mean that you should run out and buy more capacity to fix it. In my previous blog post, I discussed that before you react to an increase...
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Focus on the Constraint
What if you can’t simply reallocate resources to maximize flow because the constraint is the process or a machine itself? Sometimes it takes a little more creativity to identify how to exploit the...
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Challenge Your Assumptions about the Process
To increase output, whether in a disaster or in everyday pressures, you must challenge your assumptions to find solutions. Usually, the solution is not obvious (otherwise, it would have been...
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Reconsider Your Rules on Materials and Suppliers
In my previous post about checking your assumptions, I talked about the rules and requirements about your process. The supply chain is no different. After all, rules are made, boundary conditions...
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Manage and Align Performance by Applying Uniform Standards
The more contractors or departments involved in a project, the more chances for variation and, often, more confusion. There is always the opportunity for misalignment and miscommunication. The...
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Lesson 7 – Accelerate Communications
I’m continuing my series on the Achieving Top Performance: 7 lessons learned in a Disaster, an elaboration on the work we did during the Gulf oil spill. This week covers the final lesson,...
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Blindsided! Conflicting Priorities in Projects
This week, I am starting new series of postings that showcase some of the most common blind spots to successful project execution. I call these the blind spots because most managers are not even aware...
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Blind Spot 2 – Death by Meeting
Ugh. Another project meeting. We’ve all been there, annoyed when our reminder goes off (if you still use them!) reminding us of our 8th meeting of the day. We’re annoyed because there are so many...
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Blind Spot 3: Put the Whip to WIP
The sooner you start, the sooner you finish, right? Perhaps you remember the tale of the tortoise and the hare. Sure, the hare is fast, but in the end, it’s the tortoise’s steady progress that wins...
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Management Blind Spot 4 – False Starts
Everyone has started a project only to realize that you do not have all the items you need to finish. Drywall anchors – picture hangers – spackle – no matter the project, it’s the little things that...
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Blind Spot 5 – Misleading Metrics
Eli Goldratt wrote “Tell me how you measure me and I will tell you how I behave. If you measure me in an illogical way…do not complain about illogical behavior.” People will take actions based on how...
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How to Get Productive Project Teamwork from Distributed Teams
Managing any project team can be challenging. Managing a distributed team is a challenge cubed. In any project, coordinating the workflow among your resources is almost always difficult. When multiple...
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Synchronizing the Right Work, at Right Time, Regardless of Distance
The foundation of teamwork is having a shared vision of the situation. From that, the team can create an action plan to move towards a common objective. When the team is dispersed on different...
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Imposing a Common Deadline on Remote Teams
It’s rare to find a project without a deadline. Due dates and deadlines drive the entire project management process. I’m not talking about the dates for each task (which is wise to avoid), but dates...
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Basing Promises on an Enterprise-Wide Understanding of Capacity
In my last blog post, I talked about how to manage deadlines when your teams are geographically dispersed. How to create those deadlines? Anyone can guess – and we do – a lot. Sometimes, those...
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Making Realistic Risk Assessments with Remote Teams
In my previous post on making project delivery promises, I wrote about the need to set delivery dates based on a clear understanding of capacity and workload. During project execution, the promises...
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Visualizing Projects: “Planning” Won’t Dispel The Darkness
This is where most project plans begin and end: in the dark. Why are projects late? If you’re responsible for the performance of a project team, you may be tempted to blame the usual suspects: it’s...
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Visualizing Projects: Why Meetings Suck
The existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, once observed that, “Hell is other people.” He wasn’t quite right. Hell is other people, in a closed room, looking to assign blame for yet another...
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Visualizing Projects: Start With a Clean Slate
In just a few minutes, everyone will share one common understanding of what needs to be done and who needs to do it. Let’s get rid of the room. Let’s get rid of the chairs. While we’re at it, let’s get...
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Visualizing Projects: What Do You Need to Manage?
The vertical columns of process steps are complemented with horizontal rows of….whatever is most relevant for you to manage in order to fulfill the process steps. These can be (but are not limited to):...
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Visualizing Projects: Now You Can See the Priorities
By posting all the project tasks to ONE board, and attributing a status to each task, your team instantly moves its attention from a competing body of tasks to a SINGLE project, openly displayed. In...
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Visualizing Projects: Bring Work in Progress Under Control
Multi-tasking: the dark art of doing many things…poorly. Every time an engineer, a designer, an operator – or anybody – has to switch from one task to another, valuable time is lost. When the former...
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Visualizing Projects: Measure the Right Things to Get the Right Behaviors
There is constant tension among project team members when their individual or functional objectives are not in alignment with the project’s objectives (i.e., maximizing resource efficiency is not the...
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Little’s Law – The ONE thing you can do to improve process performance
Is your system in chaos? What do I mean by chaos? I mean resource shortages, priority battles, constant expediting, too much work in process, or too much rework. Everything just takes too long....
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Multitasking is Evil – The Number One Killer of Project Productivity
Is multitasking a good thing? Most think that multitasking is a good skill to have; chewing gum and walking, reading and breathing, texting and driving (but you don’t do that, do you?). Even though we...
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How to Build a Reliable Delivery Process
Despite the advances in information technology and systems, most plants manage the process of prioritizing and managing the production of customer orders as if it were an art, approaching the task as a...
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How to Build a Reliable Delivery Process: Planning
Install a Master Scheduler A single, master plan drives the Maximum Flow System and the planning process is the responsibility of the master scheduler; he/she owns the process. While that may seem like...
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How to Build a Reliable Delivery Process: Synchronized Execution
The Production Manager Owns Execution Often, the responsibility for execution is split up among functions or it’s not clear who is responsible for the entire process. There can be no question of who is...
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How to Build a Reliable Delivery Process: Teamwork
The entire team must participate to make delivery reliable. It isn’t just the operations or production departments. Perfect execution is a commitment for the whole organization. Involving people begins...
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How to Build a Reliable Delivery Process: Promise to be on Time
Being on time begins with setting the expectation with the customer, promising delivery when it can actually be completed. Order delivery promising must reflect available capacity. Just as you manage...
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Is There a Standard to Project Execution? The Project Execution Maturity Model
What do managers do when their project teams are unsuccessful? You probably do what most managers do and send them for project management skills training. There is some evidence that shows more skills...
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How to Build a Reliable Delivery Process: Sales and Operations Planning
The glue that holds this whole reliable deliver process all together, as well as the last part of the process, is the reconciliation processes. At the top level, the sales and operations planning...
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Training and PMOs Will Not Save Our Projects – Norway & Singapore Events
Project success. Everyone wants it, yet successful completions are rare. Why? We have our own opinion, based on our experience, but what if we’re subject to recency or other types of bias? What is...
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