Tuesday, April 4

8:30am -12:00pm Keynote: TOC and Changing the Enterprise

"One of the biggest problems…is that most people don’t see the company as a whole. They see fragments. Because of this, you get localized optimums, many wrong decisions, and much miscommunication."
- Eli Goldratt, interviewed in Product Development Best Practices Report

In his highly logical, mince-no-words style, Dr. Goldratt will lead you to see the big picture and discover how everything ties together. He will discuss how to generate a common language, vastly improve communication, and launch correct (not flavor-of-the-month) initiatives that can lift the company. You will know how and why you must go beyond product development to truly accelerate it.

1. What to change? – What is the core problem?
Every executive is convinced that the only prudent way to manage an organization is to never lose sight of the global picture — and that this is the way they are currently managing their organizations. Not only is this not the case, but the erroneous belief blocks executives from managing according to their healthy intuition.

2. What to change to? – What is the solution?
You are most likely familiar with parts of solutions (in production, marketing and engineering) from reading Dr. Goldratt’s books, but not the complete solution…

3. How to cause the change?
Twenty years of TOC experience has shown that all obstacles have one thing in common: they are human-related, psychological obstacles. What these obstacles are and how to successfully overcome each of them is the essence of this presentation.

Dr. Goldratt will then be available throughout the two-day summit and will hold an open Q&A forum at the conclusion, after you’ve had a chance to synthesize the content of his presentation with your own personal experience, case studies, and break-out sessions.

12:00pm – 1:30 pm Luncheon

1:30pm -5:00pm Industry Case Studies — Implementing TOC for Multi-project Management

• William J. Baron, Director Optical Products Technology,
  Lucent Technologies, Bell Laboratories

Lucent Technologies' Fiber Optic Cable Business Unit designs, develops, manufactures and sells Fiber Optic Cables that are used in both outside and inside building environments. Lucent's large telecommunications provider customers continually demand new designs to meet their special circumstances. Hear how this Business Unit implemented TOC Project Management, the challenges faced, and the outcomes achieved: The product introduction interval was reduced dramatically, on-time delivery was markedly improved, and the organization's capacity to develop products tripled.

• Guy Brill, Vice President, Elbit Systems Ltd.

Elbit Systems Ltd is a $500 M contractor and multidisciplinary integrator of large-scale upgrade programs for aircraft, helicopters, tanks, and other combat platforms. With 900 people involved in projects, Elbit is an incredibly complex matrix of multiple projects and resources. Under the personal guidance of Dr. Goldratt, Guy pioneered the application of Critical Chain in multi-project environments in 1997. Find out how Elbit has used Critical Chain to manage all their development projects, and have met schedules and improved quality.

• Brent King, Executive Director in Product & Technology Development,
  Seagate Technology

Seagate Technology is the world’s leading supplier of disk drives and related equipment. To stay on top of this highly competitive market, Seagate must deliver faster Time-to-Market across its broad product line. As a result, Seagate invests more money (almost $150M per year) than anyone else in their industry on both core technology and product development.

Seagate uses critical chain and buffer management to manage its New Product Development – both Project and Pipeline Management – programs, enabling Seagate to bring its matrix organization into alignment to meet the corporate goals. In the future, Pipeline Management will further enable Seagate to exploit potential market opportunities, and to leverage its resource availability in this process.

• Rick Mueller, Special Project Engineer, Ford Motor Company

With many simultaneous projects contending for the same scarce resources, those with lesser potential must become subordinate. Rick will discuss experience gained at Ford in recognizing opportunities to apply and implement principles of constraints management to prioritize the product portfolio. As the appropriate means for each organization to integrate constraint management principles into its process will vary as a function of its organization structure, size, typical project length and average variability, and current management philosophy (just to name a few of the defining factors), Rick will discuss how such means could/should be evaluated for appropriateness and probable effectiveness, based on reports of the results of attempts to do so thus far.

5:00 pm –5:45 pm Interactive Panel Discussion:
TOC and Alternative Constraints Management Approaches

5:45 pm - ? Reception and Networking Dinner

Download Summit Brochure with Registration Application
(constraints.pdf - 81kb) - Includes all program details

Wednesday, April 5

8:00 am – 9:00 am Breakfast panel:Choosing and Using TOC Tools and Software

9:00 am -12:00 pm Facilitated Break-Out Sessions

3. TOC for Determining Product Concept Viability:
For best ROI of critical resources as well as effective synchronization, organizations must determine both the true market potential of a product and the internal capacity to develop it. TOC provides a clear framework to make both evaluations, which Chad Smith and Debra Smith of the Constraints Management Group (and with years at the Goldratt Institute) will walk you through.

12:00pm – 1:30 pm Luncheon

1:30pm – 3:00 pm Report Out and Q&A Forum