Company:

Human resources office, staffing division

Goal:

Hire the most new employees possible in a month

Throughput: The rate at which the system generates new applicants for hire

A well working staffing department.

Inventory: All the money the system invests in things it intends to sell, including facilities and equipment, which are likely to be sold off as scrap after they obsolesce beyond their useful lives.

All the money the hiring system uses to advertise, recruit, and select candidates from the announcement applicants.

Operating Expenses: All the money the system spends to turn Inventory into Throughput.

The cost of hiring people internal to the organization and those external on announcements and applications.

Bottleneck: The Theory of Constraints likens each system (i.e., an entire organization or a unit of a larger organization) to a chain, or a network of chains. In any chain there is one weakest link, which limits the performance of the entire chain. This weakest link is the system's bottleneck.

A bottleneck in the hiring process is the time to go through security checks for all the applicants that do not already have a clearance.

Step 1. Identify the systems bottlenecks, bottlenecks are he amount of time to receive applicants from the system gathering applicants. Another bottleneck is the security clearance check that takes time to validate if an employee can obtain a clerance.

Step 2. Decide how to exploit the bottlenecks Exploit these bottlenecks by creating an extension of the hiring process by allowing individuals waiting for a clearance to start on a probationary period contingent on the security clearance. Amplify the amount of applicants by collecting all the applications and streamline the process to check who is best qualified.

Step 3. Subordinate everything else to the above decision Subordinate everything else to the above decision be making sure all the processes align to making the applicants received go through the extended hiring process.

Step 4. Elevate the systems bottlenecks   this can be done by making sure security clearances and the extension of the hiring process are a number one priority.

Step 5. If in a previous step, a bottleneck has been broken go back to step 1.

Possible Solution: Once it is mandatory that the hiring process is extended to create a probationary period contingent on the availability of a security clearance, after that every time a clearance is not obtained, the individual can be let go from the organization without a lengthy discipline process

Input employees into the security check system before hiring the applicants. Make it understood that the clearance must pass before completing the hiring process but they can still start the position. The point is placing a contingency on the appointment that shows the appointment is not final until the clearance has passed.   

Given the definitions of throughput, inventory, operating expense and bottleneck as discussed in "The Goal," define these terms in the context of an organization (work, social or religious) of which you are a member.

In a discussion posting ("TOC"), you need to identify the most serious bottleneck that this organization faces and discuss the reasons for its selection. In addition, you should identify the most serious bottleneck this organization faces and apply the five-step process outlined in "The Goal" (p. 301) to break the bottleneck and increase the organization's throughput. (If you purchased the Kindle version, note that the five-step process is discussed toward the end of Chapter 36.)

The organization you select does not have to be engaged in manufacturing. It also doesn't have to be the entire organization. For large organizations, you can select a unit of the organization. It is important that you select an organization or a unit of a larger organization with which you are very familiar.

As a reference, here are the definitions discussed in "The Goal" (as defined by Goldratt and Cox, 2004):

Throughput: The rate at which the system generates money through sales.

Inventory: All the money the system invests in things it intends to sell - including facilities and equipment - which are likely to be sold off as scrap after they obsolesce beyond their useful lives.

Operating Expense: All the money the system spends to turn inventory into throughput.

Bottleneck: The theory of constraints likens each system (i.e., an entire organization or a unit of a larger organization) to a chain, or a network of chains. In any chain there is a weakest link which limits the performance of the entire chain. This weakest link is the system's bottleneck.

Also, please remember to clearly breakdown each of the five steps (e.g., Step 1: What is the bottleneck, etc.) in your conference posting to demonstrate your understanding of TOC.