Goldrush going Goldratt

Last episode of Discovery’s Goldrush showed the power of Goldratt’s theory of constraint. Although Goldratt’s theories are very powerfull and increase profit by enormous numbers, very limited companies make use of them. FloatControl has developed the so-called ‘progress process’ to take Goldratt’s advantage.

Situation

The gold is extracted from excavated ground. A dozer transports the soil on a conveyor to a sluice box. One of the main characters of the show, Parker, had hired a consultant to improve the production.

Parker had set the conveyor on speed ‘3’ out of ‘5’ to ensure the dozer could make up the speed and the sluice box would never be without ground.

The conveyor was set to ‘5’ and two dozers were deployed to ensure max loading of the sluice box.

Goldratt

Parker was reluctant to deploy another dozer. He didn’t realize the speed of the conveyor did directly influence the gold production: this was the constraint. The critical resource was the dozer and that needed to be protected to ensure maximum throughput.

Translation to project management

The throughput within project management is the critical path. One day delay of the critical path effects in one day delay of the complete project (and hence one day less to earn back the development costs).

Pharma

A small company is reluctant to hire consultants for project management. Most of the time a CRO is asked to do the development. The company doesn’t realize a CRO has a resource-driven planning instead of a project-driven planning and makes more money if the project takes longer.

When a company is growing, most of the time project management is installed. The main tasks of a project manager are making sure the team is working via GCP and is handed all tools needed to produce at a maximum level. Differentiation on indication area is well-known. Project planning has less focus let alone critical path management.

Goldratt’s laws in project management

Goldratt stated that everybody builds in buffertime. He also introduced ‘Parkinson’s law’ which means an individual will take the time for a task which is available. Next to that he introduced ‘student’s syndrome’: the amount of work is undervalued whereas their own capacity is overvalued resulting in the well known ‘too little, too late’. Last but not least Goldratt explained how multi-tasking is ruining productivity. Especially if a task drives the critical path.

Solution

FloatControl has developed a ‘progress process’ which ensures the project’s critical path is as short as possible. Visit our website or contract us for a free consult.