The Goal: a process of Ongoing Improvement

DW: What changes did you make in the press room?
CM: We chartered some teams to look at the various products that we made
and began to challenge assumptions on how we use the presses. We make
two types of books, a perfect-bound paperback book and a casebound
hardcover book. We have sheet-fed and web presses. We began to devise
rules on what type of books went on what pieces of equipment, to maximize
the capacities of the equipment and to meet customers’ needs. By creating
new standards we eliminated an incredible amount of waste. Before, we were
constantly reworking jobs to meet what we thought were customer needs. In
reality it was forever putting us farther and farther behind. Rethinking all our
assumptions forced us to discipline ourselves and to maximize each
component in the press room. That allowed us to flow the work more
consistently.

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DW: How did you involve the employees?
CM: Employees at Thomson-Shore have the ability to influence the standards
and the way work moves within their area of expertise. When you’re strictly
localized in your thinking, every person wants the job designed to benefit
themselves. And that creates chaos. Before we did our TOC implementation,
we could never agree on anything without a long, involved discussion. If we
wanted to make a change we had to get 12 people in a room and then try to
reach a compromise on everything. We could never please everybody.
Having everyone read 
The Goal
helped everyone understand that the basis for
everything we do wasn’t localized thinking anymore. So, for example, if a
job had to spend a little more time in the bindery, that’s okay, as long as
that’s what’s most effective for the press, which we had identified as the
major constraint. In the end we got the throughput that we needed.