Is it possible to apply science in management?
Eliyahu M. Goldratt, el físico israelí creador de la Teoría de Restricciones pensó que si era posible. En sus últimos meses de vida comenzó un libro que pensaba titular «La Ciencia de la Gerencia» y sólo alcanzó a publicar el prólogo, lo escribió, lo narró y lo documentó en YouTube, no tuvo tiempo para más. El 11 de junio del 2011 el Dr. Goldratt murió.
The tools of the Theory of Constraints can be grouped into two. Management skills and applications. The first are a group of tools that are based on causation. They examine a situation and try to explain its origin. The assumptions on which it is based, the consequences it can have. This is the first function of science, the explanation. Moving from ignorance or indifference to the origin of events, to related situations or at least to hypotheses to be validated, is what a scientist is looking for. The second part is the prediction. By understanding the laws or the behavior of certain variables, the scientist can predict what will happen, for example, the timing of eclipse occurrence or the way in which a certain disease is eliminated. That is a prediction. Simply put, science explains and predicts.
Is it possible to apply explanation and prediction to management?
Dr. Goldratt validated it again and again. In each work he published, in each business meeting, public or private, he worked hard to explain the behaviors of the organizations, of the management assumptions that led to the assessed consequences. Those of us who had the honor of working with Dr. Goldratt know that their tools work very well to explain and predict organizational phenomena.
But this is not enough. Not because of being able to explain why sales are low and predict that if more is invested in digital marketing, there will be more visualizations in social networks, a manager will be successful.
A rupture model is necessary to achieve different and growing results. This is the cherry on the cake! The applications developed by Dr. Goldratt are so innovative and revolutionary, that they are still at a very low level of use. Maybe because we have been in charge of selling the tool more than the solution of the need, that is, we want to sell the hammer and not the need to place the picture on the wall. This is a simple hypothesis that we are trying to invalidate in Leversens.
For now I will end by saying that the applications of the theory developed by Dr. Goldratt allow us to reduce the inventories of the supply chain by detaching from the forecasts. Increase the delivery speed of projects by eliminating intermediate execution dates. Increase the price negotiation margin by eliminating the allocation of costs to products and other break-up solutions that I will discuss one by one in independent documents.
