Customer Reviews

Velocity: Combining Lean, Six Sigma and the Theory of Constraints to Achieve Breakthrough Performance - A Business Novel

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Velocity is similar to the goal as they write about Theory of Constraints, but become more contemporary by combining lean and six sigma. Albeit, the book is mostly about Theory of Constraints as I don't recommend buying this if you just want to learn about six sigma techniques.

The story was a touch dry, but I still found it interested and wanted to see what the ultimate solution would be for the company Hi-T. The main character Amy is likeable and you end up rooting for her. They of course introduce another character similar to Jonah from The Goal who provides clear thought (in this book Tom Dawson). The other managers are split on how they want to fix the problems and embracing the change that is needed.

The book takes you through at a high level some of these disciplines:

Lean - Creating value for customers by way of products and services with minimum waste at optimal speed in perfect balance with market demand.

Six Sigma - Identifying and eliminating defects, errors, and anything quantifiable that is unwanted by customers.

Value Stream - Laying out the stages of a process or a project. Diagramming the flow and the various branches of input.

Takt Time - Time available to work divided by demand - the time available to make the product divided by the units needed.

Theory of Constraints - Holds that every system - business system or manufacturing system - is made up of resources that each have varying limits. Performance of the total system is constrained by whatever resource is most limited or the bottleneck of the system.

While other concepts are discussed in various detail the book explains throughput well. This is the rate at which inventory is converted into completed sales, or cash. This is the language every company knows and needs to understand. This concept can be translated to service or manufacturing (and retail even).

Overall, I enjoyed reading about how this company fixed the problems they were having and embraced (reluctantly to start) some new ideas and some changes to how they have worked for years. Good read with a lot of takeaways about lead, six sigma and Theory of Constraints.

As a university professor I want students to recognize what is being practiced in industry to learn how to improve. Many of the students have had internships where TOC, Lean, or 6 Sigma are used but never all 3.
Velocity will help people get past the assumption that you have to choose between TOC and Lean and 6 Sigma improvement methodologies. It shows a clear way of integrating them for improved bottom line results. Therefore, I am going to require this business novel as part of the logistics course that I teach.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in business management at any level of an organization.

Velocity is a must read for anyone practicing Lean Six Sigma. As a newly trained Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, I have been very excited about my new found knowledge, only to find that many people from various organizations are less than thrilled with the Lean Six Sigma approach. After reading this book, I now understand what it is that has caused so many problems for companies which endorse these tools, and how these tools are misused.

Rather than attack Lean Six Sigma, the authors instead have written a novel about the implementation of these tools into a business, speaking about the positive and the negative during the growth process. What the book makes clear is that it is not Lean Six Sigma that causes the problem, rather the attempt of a company to create a culture in which Lean Six Sigma is used in every corner of a business, essentially creating islands of excellence within various workgroups. Through reading, we understand that removing waste and variation within different areas of a company does not necessarily affect throughput in a positive way; we must concentrate our efforts where they are most needed, not arbitrarily to every facet of an organization.

Velocity makes it clear that a perfectly balanced system is not only rare, but also not necessarily in the best interest of throughput. Velocity teaches us the importance of having a constraint within a system, rather than the accepted idea of removing constraints. It also teaches us how to optimize the constraint while still maintaining it, to achieve the best possible flow through the process.

I'm a young project manager who has been lucky enough to set up a few production lines in my career. I loved this book! I only put it down once between starting to read and finishing it. Then I last stayed up all night, literally to 4am simulating the penny game on excel (much to my wife's dismay). Velocity has a lot of great tools and methods, but for me the greatest take-away from this book is not to fall into the trap of being a true believer of any system no matter how great it is or appears to be.

I love how Velecity set lean and six sigma as a tool kit to be used in certain circumstances. I only wish that TOC had been framed in the same sense.

This is an entertaining book, as are most of the TOC business novels. I was pleased to see Jeff Cox return to the scene (so to speak). BTW, Dee was my instructor at AGI in 1998 for Project Management (where I met Dr. Meeks -- Hi Howard!), and I know her to be an exceptional educator. Susan I have met briefly at various times at TOC events and know her to be passionate about the subject.

So, I was pleased to learn of this effort. I read it in about six hours on my iPod touch (Kindle app) within a span of 24 hours. So, when I say it was a page turner, trust me! One con: all kindle books should sell for $9.99 or less IMNSHO, so if I did not have a free gift card, I would not have bought it yet. Also, the diagrams are not readable on the iPhone/iTouch.

If you are excited about TOC, then this is a must own title. As one reviewer pointed out (Vishal), it really lacks any depth for Six Sigma folks. It offers a lot more for the Lean (TPS) crowd. Which describes me, so I might like it better than the slide rule crowd. Would I give this book to a Lean practitioner? Yes. As a conversation starter. It won't do your job of convincing Lean folks to take you seriously, but you should not expect it to. I love how Dr Lisa promotes the opening of a Mafia Offer, in that you should ask the prospect if this data is relevant to the challenges they are facing (paraphrased, of course).

Same for this book. Ask your Lean friends to look it over, and ask them where they agree and where they disagree. This might be the key to getting them to read "The Goal" if they haven't already. Or "Critical Chain." Or, for those in Supply Chain roles, "Necessary But Not Sufficient" (NBNS). Or "Purple Curve Effect" for folks trying to make a difference "right where they are!" But I digress...

One final negative branch, again, as others have suggested, the Thinking Processes as documented are a little weak. As I have moved on to Dettmer's 3rd Generation (now called "The Logical Thinking Process" and the title of his best work yet, and a chapter in the new TOC Handbook), that is not an issue. When NBNS came out, Goldratt said he did not realize how many people would read it that had not read "The Goal" first, therefore, it caused some confusion. That a concern here too.

Bottom line: I like it. It adds value to the conversation. The authors deserve all the praise that gets sent their direction.

I have taught an bachelors level Intro to Operations Management class for seven sememsters where the book, The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, was required reading. While situational environment in The Goal is a bit dated because it was originally published in 1984 (updates only added new, relevant thinking and didn't change the core story), the methods it describes work just as well now as they did then.

VELOCITY does little to add to the Drum, Buffer, Rope information The Goal provides in its current edition. The only thing it does add to The Goal is bits and pieces from the VERY good "The Goal" follow up book, It's Not Luck: by the Author of The Goal with the use of Present Reality Tree, Prerequisite Tree, and Future Reality Tree techniques. The confusing thing for anyone who has read both of these Goldratt books is that they do not call the techniques by their TOC names until well after they have been introduced and used. Unfortunately, they completely skip the very useful "dispersing the cloud" conflict resolution technique as it would have helped more clearly illustrate the degree to which some of the perceived conflicts between TOC and Lean/Six Sigma (LSS) appear to be intractible.

I can only ASSUME (yeah, I know what happens when you assume something...) they did this because of some problems that arose from people reading The Goal. Some complained that the terminilogy used in The Goal was slightly unappealing or off-putting. Also, there were problems in that some people did not think the techniques could be applied without a guru like "Jonah" to help them. The Jonah character in The Goal and It's Not Luck was only placed there to emphasize the Socratic Method of teaching/learning and be a kind of mental sounding board for the protagonist, Alex. Perhaps the authors of VELOCITY delayed using the terminology to get people hooked before explaining the source of the techniques. I really do not know or understand their reasons as I think using the correct terminology thoughout the book would have made it a bit stronger.

The best thing this book does (as noted by other reviewers) is break down the notion that TOC and Lean/Six Sigma are mutually exclusive philosophies/paradigms. It does show that the two techniques do have synergies, but puts TOC firmly in the drivers seat with Lean/Six Sigma as an important assistant. If you are hard core in believing that LSS is the end-all and be-all problem solving/management paradigm for business, you will probably be offended by this. However, if you can get past this, you will find out about some very practical shortcomings in LSS that TOC addresses for the benefit of the firm, things that are based in General System Theory.

As a researcher and educator, I would have thought this book could have been better and faster paced if they had more heavily referred back to The Goal and It's Not Luck when using the tools and spent more time on explaining the synergies between TOC and Lean/Six Sigma. Because while this book is supposed to be about those synergies, it was overly lacking in the details and the "Oh, wow!" connections between how LSS can help TOC be even better.

I could fill in the lack of connections because I've been studying both for over 15 years now (not because I'm a genius!), but it isn't always obvious. In some ways, the benefits of the TOC/LSS synergies were introduced like a cheap mystery novel where the key details are not revealed until the last minute so only the hero could possibly see where things are going. Even then the benefits were not as clearly outlined as they could be to show their full impact.

It should also be noted that Goldratt is no longer associated with the Avraham Goldratt Institute (AGI, where the primary authors are partners) and hasn't been for about 10 years. This may be reflected in the apparent stagnancy of the TOC techniques used in the book (all of which are at least 15 years old).

If you are trying to introduce TOC into a Lean/Six Sigma environment, you may have problems with this book because LSS doesn't fare very well. The book definitely doesn't describe a "partnership of equals" relationship, but it is pretty clear in its justification of why.

If you are looking to introduce LSS into a TOC environment, I would guess you will have better luck as it demonstrates that the LSS techiques are very useful in elevating the constraint and building protective capacity in the Capacity Constrained Resources (CCR's).

This isn't a bad book, I just believe that if you are going to spend your money, you would be better off reading The Goal and It's Not Luck. If you have already read them, then reread them before reading this book so you can concentrate on the differences/synergies between TOC and LSS outlined in VELOCITY.

Dear Dee Jacob: I just finished reading Velocity. As the first Jonah in the Navy, (I Attended the first Jonah Program held at Wright-Patterson AFB ) and having implemented TOC with DBR scheduling on the T56 Aircraft Engine program at the Naval Aviation Depot at Alameda in the early 1990's I can tell you your book hits the mark, is realistic and should be required reading for everyone from CEO's to college students. In the 1990's our focus was on constraint management and supporting it with JIT and SPC. I especially liked how in Velocity you developed the process of ongoing improvement in the final chapters as the management team look at how to improve the future reality tree.

Once again thank you and your team for writing the book.

Jerry Ghiselli (Jonah)

This is overall an interesting read with real world characters and a captivating story line. Perhaps limited by the format of a business novel, I have found that the greatest weakness is not having any discussions on the applicability of the proposed methodology. In other words, the DBR with a constraint instead of a balanced line approah may or may not work for the readers' circumstances. The necessary conditions and limtation of the methodology is not discussed at all. The whole argument is presented around a dice game that has too many deviations from a real production line. I would like to ask further:
*How reepeatable are the results of the dice game? How sound is the statistics behind it?
*How close is the game in resemblance to reality of a production line? What are the limitations? Under what conditions would the TOC approach (DBR) work better or worse?
*Under what conditions does a balanced line with takt time work better or worse than an unbalanced line? How to quantify the variability in order to determine which approach to use?
Here is a link that discuss more on these topics.
[...]

A good story to read.

Pros: Brings out the differences between Lean and TOC. The similarities between Lean and ToC are also touched upon. Does a good job in explaining why the assumption that customer demand is stable ( and hence takt time) can lead to unintended consequences.

Cons: The focus is on TOC and Lean, and so I think the title is a bit misleading. Six Sigma gets a mention here and there. I was hoping that there would be a deeper discussion on using the TOC tools not only at a system level but also at the process level and integration with the DMAIC process.

Summary: A bit disappointed, given all the attention that this subject is receiving. I was hoping for some more depth.

I'm very surprised by this book! It is a business novel, it's subject isnt't new to me, but the form definetly is.
The concept of a "business novel" is quite odd. Normally "business" books are old topics with a new twist, e.g. "Earn more money - this time using the internet" (who wouldn't like to make more money).

This book has a good, believable story, which many of the readers will be familiar with. The specific topics, TOC, Lean, and Six Sigma, are explained, but only to an understandable level suitable for the novice.
As a novel, we have all seen the stories before.

To be clear, I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in the topics TOC, Lean and Six Sigma. I was sitting at work, anxiously waiting to go home to continue reading the book. When finally coming home, I turned off the TV to focus on this book! It's a GREAT read!