Learning from Experience II

Friday Nov. 11th,2011 Eli Schragenheim will lead a workshop on Learning from Experience. The purpose is to learn how to understand the cause and effect (the why) of disturbing and unexpected results from our actions AND, more importantly to take and apply the important lessons we learn.

The stories below are all about unexpected effects that someone has experienced and that he or she could not properly understand. With Eli, we will look at such problems (bring your own!) and analyse them.

The Workshop (English) will be at the hotel Schiller in Olching (near Munich) followed by the TOC4U Meeting (mostly German) on Saturday Nov. 12th. You can register here:REGISTER or call +49 6252 795 3070 if you have problems with the German registration page.

“Isn’t It Obvious?”

Eli Goldratt’s latest book (and I think his last) is about retail. The store manager is on his way to work when he receives a call that a water main has burst in the shopping centre and that his storage area is under water. He finds out that until repairs are made he has no storage available within the shopping centre. To further compound his problems the price of other local warehousing has jumped – obviously because the know demand will be high!

The store manager comes to an arrangement with the regional warehouse that they supply he with what he needs on a daily basis to be able to sustain sufficient stock in the store. The two of them work out a system whereby the store locates its inventory at the warehouse and the warehouse replenishes the store based on whatever they order the evening before.

The surprise for the store manager is the sudden jump in performance. Before the burst water main the store was languishing somewhere near the bottom of the performance rankings. Soon after the ‘disaster’ the shop’s performance jumps to the top of the pile – not just in the region, but, for the entire chain. The store manager is at a loss to explain what has happened.

What do you think was the real cause for his sudden spurt in performance?

What can we all learn from the story?

To find out what really happened – read the book!

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