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sinha.rk.dr@gmail.com
Why do some change management efforts in Supply Chain fail to deliver?
Dr. Goldratt has emphasized that all change management efforts should follow the 3-step process, answering the questions ‘What to change?’, ‘What to change to?’ and ‘How to cause the change?’.
In my opinion, the starting point of ‘What to change?’ is the most important question. Supply chain teams often work on so many initiatives simultaneously. Many of these would yield only marginal improvements and may not be aligned to the goal of the company.
We should instead focus our efforts on the ‘Leverage Points’ in the supply chain, where a small improvement would lead to major benefits for the company. These are generally on the ‘constraints’ and ‘bottlenecks’. If we are trying to improve other processes, the benefits would be marginal (sometimes negative) and the team alignment is difficult to get.
Let’s focus our efforts on the few initiatives which improve working of the constraint and move us faster towards the goal of the company.
TOC offers an excellent method to identify and ‘Focus’ on such initiatives.