years to spread from the origin to the whole company? EG: Not necessarily. It depends on who took the initiative. If the initiative
was taken by a middle level manager, it naturally takes much longer
compared to the many cases where the initiative was taken by a top manager.
What is amazing is that the complexity of the organization is playing almost
no role. In very large and complex organizations it takes TOC about the same
time to become the dominant culture as it takes in small, relatively simple
organizations.
DW: Can you give an example? EG: In order to prove my point let’s take an extreme example. An example of
an operation that is not only large and complex but also dominated by large
uncertainties - a repair depot of the United States Marine Corps. This depot is
overhauling helicopters. It’s very large – several thousand people. It is very
complex – the helicopters are disassembled to the smallest pieces. Even the
paint is sandblasted off. Whatever has to be repaired is repaired. Whatever
has to be replaced is replaced. And then you reassemble the whole airplane.
One has to make sure that certain parts which were taken from the original
airplane go back on the same airplane. What makes it even more complex is
the fact that two intrinsically different modes of operation have to be
synchronized. The disassembly/assembly lines are a multi-project
environment. The repair shops that feed the lines are a production
environment, and the two must work in tandem. The real challenge is the fact
that the whole operation is dominated by high uncertainty – one doesn’t
know the content of the work until the helicopter is disassembled and
inspected. Surprises all over the place. A real nightmare. Still, it took the
commander less than a year to implement TOC. An implementation that was
so solid that the process of on-going improvement continues with his
successors.
