Theory of Constraints has been applied successfully in a large number and variety of service industries including finance, banking, consulting, telecommunications, information systems, software development, legal and judicial, prisons, education, healthcare, etc. The best information on TOC in the service sector is located at:

http://www.tocico.org/

Once on this page select the “Success Stories” tab which provides thirteen portals. The portals include:

Portals are available in the following areas of TOC:

Basics of TOC

Finance & Measures

Government

Healthcare

Manufacturing

Project Management

Sales & Marketing

Service Industry

Strategy & Tactics

Supply Chain

Thinking Processes

TOC, Lean & Six Sigma (TLS)

What is TOC

Each portal contains 5-7 videos on that topic. Usually the first video is a tutorial on that topic and the remaining videos are successful case studies presented at the TOCICO conferences from 2004-2013. A pdf of the presentation overheads is also provided. Each portal also usually includes an annotated bibliography of all presentations and webinars on that subject area.

For example TOC in healthcare has contains seven videos with pdfs with the lead video on some TOC concepts applied to healthcare. A wide variety of different applications are then provided from the implementation of TOC in a large family practice clinic (where the practice went from a break-even situation to a 56% improvement in revenues earned with most of that dropping to the bottom line), an oral surgery clinic (a specialty practice that went from a breakeven practice to making several million dollars per year in profit), a number of different hospital implementations in which the hospital, in the UK for example when from the bottom of the list of 500 hospitals to the top 10 hospitals in performance in a few month period with no additional resources. Alex Knight has been applying TOC in healthcare in the UK for over a decade and has implemented it in a wide variety of different types of hospital (acute, mental, etc.) with great success. He has recently written a novel (available in the UK) about implementing TOC in a hospital (Written in the style of Goldratt’s The Goal). Alex is keynoting a day on healthcare at the TOCICO Annual Conference in DC in June. He is giving a “How to” workshop on implementing TOC in healthcare.

The second day of the conference Kristen Cox (no relation) is giving the keynote and presentation a day “How to” workshop on doing more with higher quality and responsiveness with fewer resources for government. You might check the Government portal for previous presentations and webinars on implementing TOC in government. There is also a service industry portal with 5-7 videos of implementing TOC in various services. There are about 2 dozen videos on TOC in government.

This website also has a portal on TOC in the service industries with six videos describing the concepts and implementations. The annotated bibliography contains descriptions of over sixty presentations of TOC in service industries. As you might expect by the titles of the portals several contain service applications.

There is another website that is dear to my heart!!! It is the website of TOC for education:

http://www.tocforeducation.com/

This organization leads the introduction and use of TOC in countries around the world. TOCfE is a non-profit organization founded in 1995 by Dr. Goldratt to disseminate the logic based tools and common sense methodologies of the Theory of Constraints in education. The logic tools can be used by kids to solve their own problems, set (and achieve) ambitious targets and identify the negative consequences of their actions (before they take the actions). It is also useful in helping children learn and in school administration. Some unbelievable results have been achieved around the world by using TOC in education. Today, Japan, Philippines, Mexico, are quite active in implementing TOC in their education systems.

I have tried to provide a wide variety of service industry applications with documented references. I personally used the TOC thinking process in my undergraduate, MBA and PhD classes at the University of Georgia for a number of years prior to retirement. Students were taught the thinking tools on their own personal productivity problems then worked with various businesses in the Athens and Atlanta areas to identify the core problem of blocking the organization from making more money now and in the future; developing a win-win solution to the problem then developing an implementation plan for the organization. We weren’t concerned with whether the business was a service, government, or manufacturing business; the TP tools are universal, applying logic and common sense to identify the core problem. I once had a college swimmer analyze her swimming and identify a solution. She won a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics. I know nothing about swimming but I do know the TP. She was 26 year old when she won the medal!!!

Dear Cox, Thanks for a very articulate response. TOC can be applied to service sector. Service sector has its own peculiarities and challenges. It is interesting to look at the banking , insurance and such sectors. The expectations of user community keeps on changing dynamically. . It is for the modelers to visualize how dynamically the constraints are changing and accordingly one needs to apply TOC.

You are correct about the peculiarities and challenges; every organization claims to be unique and say "that won't work here!". I am amazed at how innovative people are in applying TOC. Every system has a few control points only. If one identifies and exploits the control points related to the constraint and changes the job descriptions of all other (non-constraint) resources to support the constraint (instead of doing the best they can at their own jobs) the significant improvement can be realized almost immediately. I taught these concepts to the support staff at an 11.5 provider medical clinic at lunch and they implemented the concepts (block interruptions to the provider, maintain flow of patients in and out of the exam rooms, have everything the provider needs at hand before he/she enters the exam room, etc.) the next day. After the first day of implementation, the providers say that it was the best day they had ever had in the practice. We were able to add 20-25% more appointment slots plus virtually eliminate the "no show" and "no appointment" slots in less than two months.

The thinking processes are useful for identifying the core problem in any organization, identifying a win-win solution to address the core problem and then developing an effective implementation plan. They are quite useful in developing the solution to any organization problem whether service, government or manufacturing.

I failed to mention the non-profit organization: TOC for Education. See:

http://www.tocforeducation.com/

It is the crown jewel of theory of constraints. It describes the hundreds of applications of TOC in education. The three major application areas are:

Teaching kids to think through personal problems

Teaching effectively

Addressing administrative problems.

They have had amazing results from kindergarten to prisons with these tools!!!

If you are a teacher it is a totally different way of teaching.

You are fortunate in that India has some of the leading pioneers in TOC at Vector Consulting, Goldratt, Consulting and in industry in the Tata Steel groups, Fleetguard, etc. They have done some breakthrough thinking and implementations.

please see this presentation