Effective Management Through the Theory of Constraints with Thomas LaMay

But there will be no non-disclosure agreements violated this morning. All right. Perfect. One of the best ways to learn about theory of constraints is from someone that's actually applied it. Thomas LeMay is going to share how he uses and approaches theory of constraints so that you can also benefit from Elihu Goldratt's work and use it in your own practices. So the first thing you have to do, you have to get this book, The Goal. The Goal.

We'll pop it up. So you have to get it. And I would say, and I've told this in your presence, don't just get the book, get the audio. And the reason I say that, because it is, in my opinion, I'm probably biased, but I don't care. It is probably the best audio book that's, that's ever been made. And the reason why I say that it's number one, the subject matter is, is, I mean, it's, it's the subject matter we're going to talk about today. Day, but two voices, actors.

What does it have? It has music, sound effects, it has sound effects. It, yeah, it does. And it's like, it's like watching a movie, but you don't have the video. It's everything else. So it's kind of immersive. So you kind of enter yourself into this, into this story. That's that's the goal. And when, when you do that and read it and go over it and apply it to your life, it's, it's amazing. So I just want to leave with that. I don't know if you want to add a tidbit there too.

That's perfect. Yeah. And it's got a bonus. Well, the two bit another, since you baited me, the tidbit at the end of the audio book is the bonus chapter where Elijah Goldratt reads standing on the shoulders of giants. It was a, like a blog post or a paper. I think it was a paper that he wrote where he was talking about some of the history of where he came to the concepts of what he had and where he built it from. So that's a fantastic read. Highly recommend. And it links it to lean.

Yeah. And it's his own voice. And I listened to it like at a 1.3 X or to 1.5 or six X. So you can really hear the passion and sometimes anger in his voice as he's going through that standing on the shoulders of giants. Yeah. I, uh, I didn't get a chance to take any seminars with Dr. Goldrad, but I definitely have listened and consumed as much as possible.

While I'm sitting here with its whole catalog and perhaps maybe downstream, we'll start talking about critical chain, but. But today we're going to do the interior constraint. So I'm just going to get right into it. And it's important that when you do any kind of introduction to a subject, you tell people exactly what they're going to get into. Who would read this or go through this with me. And it's like, okay, I'm going to show you a brand new subject.

But this is what we're going to approach. And I put people in a frame of mind and kind of hopefully get them into a mood. It's like, I am ready to accept this. So this is less just blasting information at a person.

This is about this is going to be different we're going to approach problems in new ways maybe ways you haven't even considered or at least maybe in in ways that we're going to tweak the way we have a mindset about issues and problems and constraints and that's what i'm this is the introductions section of the of the agenda the next one is like constraints and construction i think that word dropped off for some reason and then the next one is cognitive bias

and that's It's important because cognitive bias just creeps into life and it's impossible to escape from. So we'll talk about how cognitive bias creeps into your problem solving and your constraint removal process. There's also identifying process. It's funny that I put bias before identifying because it's true. If you have bias, sometimes you can't even see. And I'll prove it to you. David Pérez- That's all I believe you. David Pérez- Prioritize and assign resources.

So once you've identified things, you have to use your planning, your scrum boards, your CPM schedules. Your last planner, that, that all of these things that we already use, now you have to use them even better and even more efficiently, because now you have to get to this prioritization and focusing steps. And then there is a tool, it's a constraint log. I'll show the basic steps of using a constraint log correctly. And then there's some visualization techniques that help you.

Once you've done all of those steps, you've done all of your prioritization, you've done all of your worksheets, everything's all dialed in. Maybe you got a Power BI going. Once you get to that, you visualize and you show that to people. You show your visualization to the workers out in the field. World, you show it to architects at other, in other places, say, Hey, this is our priority. This is the constraint.

And you have to get people to agree at that's the problem. So that's what we're going to talk about.

Let's get into it. So here's the guy, here's the, here's the man himself, Dr. Goldratt. And he wrote a book. It's like, what is this, this thing called theory of constraints and how it shall be implemented. But yeah, so there's Eli Goldratt. and I lived, he lived for a pretty long time, recently passed, but on his gravestone, this is Dr. Goldratt's gravestone in, in Israel. And, and it's so good, but he put on his, on his tombstone, these are six kind

of, I guess, outward going print that he left on the world. And it's still sitting there today. There's number one, people are good. every conflict can be removed three every situation no matter how complex is exceedingly simple number four every situation can be substantially improved every situation number five every person can reach a full life.

And number six, there is always a win-win solution. And I think that's important that Dr. Goldratt's kind of like legacy on, you know, above, above his mortal remains is this statement about like hope and study and an improvement and full life. Isn't that great? Like, man, it's like everything out there is like, that's, that's nothing like I've accomplished. I was an award-winning physicist and a well-best-selling novel author.

None of that's on here. Everything that's on his tombstone is what he did, what his name is, and then his outward statement in English about a whole bunch of positive things. I think that's really great. So I always put this in the frame of mind whenever I'm dealing with problems, that there's no matter how complex this issue is, we can make it more simple. Yeah, I love this. Philosophy shows through beautiful philosophy.

I'm surprised we're aligned with it. Right, Thomas? Yeah. And that's why I talk about fear. I talk about being assertive. When I talk about like approaching situations and constructions, we have to do, we have to do scientific study. These, these six words right here is where that comes from. A lot of it. Real, this really, really hits me, hits me in a good way. And since I've studied a lot of his stuff and then I kind of, I kind of understand the man.

I always put this in here because this is where this theory of constraints, like this is, this is the, this is the goal. So let's go. So what's the constraint? There are many constraints. And I think you've heard me, Felipe, talk about being in airports. When you're in an airport, you're in many constraints. Well, let's talk about, let's talk about basically two. So right in the middle there is a physical constraint, things that are physical

constraint, like, like me and my upside down K-cup, right? Like you can't physically do. Unless you damage it, you can't physically insert that K-cup incorrectly because you're restricted with dimensions and those kind of things. So we have to understand those. And some of those are even designed in, like the good people at Keurig designed that system where, hey, without damaging the equipment, if you put the K-cup in, it will nest in there and it won't leak all over.

So you're forced, you're held back by force, physically impossible to form a task. So there's, sometimes human beings can be physically constrained, right? With handcuffs and put behind bars. So that's not always a good situation for human beings, but for things, it's actually sometimes a good thing. So we don't damage things. We don't get stuff out of control. So that's a physical constraint. The harder ones are non-physical constraints.

And, and you have to, you have to put people into a constraining condition by policy or law or agency conditions, like fire, fire alarm restrictions. Those kinds of things. Eliminating factors in contracts. Oftentimes we would say a non-physical constraint in a contract. We like, we are forced to utilize raw materials from a particular place or, or avoid using components from, from specific places. So those are constraining conditions that we must understand.

Another one, non-physical constraints are budgets and schedules. We have to understand. We have to understand budgets and we have to understand schedules, those kind of things. So they put things into, they put some boundaries around things. There's other constraints, and I put them over here, learned helplessness and unwritten cultural norms. Have you ever felt a cultural norm become a constraint? Welcome to the EBFC show, the easier, better for construction podcast.

I'm your host, Felipe Engineer Manriquez. This show is all about the business of construction. Today's show is also sponsored by the Lean Construction Institute. LCI is working to lead the building industry and transforming its practices and culture. Its vision is to create a healthy and thriving industry that delivers outstanding project outcomes every time for everyone. Check the show notes for more information. Now, to the show. Absolutely. Yeah, especially working across the United States.

I mean, it's not like one construction project in one metropolitan area is not going to act and behave the same way as people would say in a rural setting, far, far away from the city, or if people are like away from their home office by States and States away, there are these invisible cultural things that absolutely are heavy handed and how people are going to behave on the project. Yeah. We have to, we have to, uh, acknowledge those. Right.

So, um, and then, and then a kind of another category that I've really kind of been interested in, but it's this this idea of missed or unknown opportunities, it's, it's kind of, it's, it's an emotional thing. So it's like, it's ignorance of alternative or unexplored options. It's like there, there could be a way out of the situation, but we just don't know what it is because we just don't know. Confusion, confusion definitely comes into play due to poorly designed processes.

Confusion becomes a constraint real quick when we're in poorly designed processes. And then And misjudging the impact of delays. Now we're talking a little bit about bias. We talk about misjudging. But the two big ones in our industry are physical and non-physical. Those are the two big ones. The behavioral ones, those definitely creep in. But I would say that the two big ones that which we must overcome first are physical and non-physical.

And this is bias. The one on the left, confirmation bias. Have you, I've felt this all the time. It's, it's this comforting lies or unpleasant truths. And we will have a tendency to search for, interpret information in a way that confirms one's perception. So if I believe that we are behind and I am a person who is of importance, or maybe I'm a person of, of authority without any kind of proof or, or, or proof. Or scientific truths, people will align themselves with, with that.

And it's, it's something you have to overcome and it's something you have to recognize very quickly. So utilizing the theory of constraints, it'll actually, it'll actually push you out of the situation. So it left out of control. We will gravitate towards things that are easy versus things that take a bunch of time, but are actually attacking a problem. And then the other one is availability bias. And this happened here in the Southeast last summer.

There was a attack on a gas pipeline, a gas pipeline, career attack and they shut down a gas pipeline that was in the Southeast for like a day. I think it was a day or maybe it's two days, but everybody went out and filled up their gas tanks in their car and there was no gas. Like you couldn't buy gas. You couldn't buy gas. And the reason why, because there's more capacity in everybody's

fuel tanks than there are capacity in the gas station. So if we all run the gas station, we're going to run them out and then there's none for anybody. So it creates that hoarding behavior. When you feel like you don't have something, you just be like, whatever's the closest, let's just do that. So it's a tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with a greater availability and memory.

So it's like, if it's in the front of your mind, like, oh, this, we might not have the ability to get fuel for two days. I have to go, you know, go to work and I got to go to stuff. So I'm going to go right now tonight and fill up my tank all the way. And if we all did that, we run it out. There's more capacity in all of our, all of our vehicles than there are capacity in the places that serve that. So those are two that you have to kind of understand that they are real.

They're unavoidable. They're unavoidable. And we have to overcome them with a consciousness greater than just what's here. So we can't just overcome them with confirmation bias by calling people liars. Can't do that. And then we can't overcome availability bias with a warm blanket and a cup of tea and be like, it'll be okay. It'll be okay. Like, no, we must take greater steps than what's on the surface level. So we have to kind of dig into stuff. So this is a physical constraint.

And this is a real one, and this actually affected me. This was a overpass on 880. It's California, Felipe. I know. I recognize it. This is the Spaghetti Bowl, and it's the southbound and I think southbound and westbound off ramps off of the Bay Bridge going towards San Jose or Oakland. And there was a tanker truck that got in an accident and it caught on fire and burned this section of bridge. I think it happened in the mid-2000s, let's say 2000, but this is a real physical constraint.

And I'll ask you, Lipe, what's a physical constraint? A physical constraint is one that creates a boundary condition that we must deal with. It either prevents us, stops us, or funnels us into a certain flow or way of doing things. So pick it. Which one? This one's physical. Just the idea. Oh, the description if I was going to put on a log is can't use southbound 880 due to bridge collapse. But in fact, there's two. One bridge is out and the other bridge is blocked.

There are two workflows that are upset. If you look at it, elevate. Oh, yeah. You got to detach. Yeah, like Jocko said, got to detach. Elevate yourself. When you look at a constraint, don't go look at it at, at surface level. This is probably taken from a helicopter, but, but you gotta detach yourself from the situation and idea it. So this is a later picture when they're repairing that bridge. But if you can see it here, I'll, here, I'll, I'll, I'll make it way more obvious. Yeah.

That when we, when we, when you look at a constraint, one bridge is, one bridge is destroyed, other bridge is blocked. That's blocking two flows of work. Two flows of traffic here. That's two directions. That's two separate sets of people. And then when we repair it, when we do the rework to repair that constraint, you also have to consider, The traffic flows or the workflows, the flow of anything and the direction there it goes.

So at some point, and this was part of the, the award winning, they were able to get that, get some of the traffic flowing again by, by building this, this, this structure very quickly, but they're able to release part of the constraint. So they were able to release one of the constraints, the southbound 880. So you see these people heading, heading towards Oakland. Boom. They were able to go back to normal traffic flows.

But if you're going west towards Sacramento on I-80, you still have to take an alternate route because they're still repairing the bridge. So when we think about the constraint and when we design and assign resources, we also have to think about what it affects downstream. And if you have multiple constraints that are competing, what are ways that we can at least open some of the bottlenecks up to start alleviating the pain?

And that's exactly what they did. The California Department of Transportation, Caltrans, did that. But don't stop there. There's a teaser.

We go back here's a here's an actual picture of the work i don't want to pick on these guys and i know i know the gentleman who has the feet but i will not release his name i will not identify him but look at that behavior one gentleman and these are these are iron workers and this is not an attempt to pick on iron workers but when you when you are doing a rework or you're relieving a constraint, sometimes we don't always design the works and that's the most safe.

And this is exactly what's happening. This gentleman, I can't even tell if he was tied off and I could, how do I tell his, you know, the little bungee cord looking connector that, that hooks to your D-ring, it's almost as if it's not connected to anything, there's lots of slack on it. And almost his entire center of gravity is over the edge. If you look really closely, maybe this gentleman's tied off, but he's up on the top of the top rungs of that basket. And that that's just risky behavior.

And they're working at night, working quickly. I imagine there's people that are like, Hey, we need to get this done. There's a whole bunch of, there's million, I don't know, 9 million people in the Bay area who are potentially impacted by this bridge. So we oftentimes don't work in haste when we plan this rework to correct a constraint. So we have to consider that. You have to consider that. So my first lesson and theory of constraints is physical constraints is starved resources.

It starves resources, starves your time. It starves personnel. It starves budget. So if we have. If we have a budget problem in our industry, if we have a labor shortage, and if we're not dealing with constraints, you're actually contributing to that problem because physical constraints, they disrupt plan sequences of workflow. It's a contributing factor in risk-taking behavior. We just saw that, right? Because it's the rushing, it's the haste, it's working at different hours.

So we don't have all of the safety professionals like them who are there for the observation of that work. And then that quality and acceptance criteria get diminished. We just feel like, just get it in there. I've said these words myself, like, just get it done. So they starve all kinds of resources because it gets us out of our planned workflows. We don't plan for constraints. Put time, personnel, and budgets to removal of constraints. We often do so in haste.

And there's consequences to that. And that's what it is. So then there's non-physical constraints. And these creep into, and there are some companies out there who have some really good products to help us eliminate them. Healthy is one, you know, using them as an example, but non-physical constraints. And I have to get a question here. It's like, this looks like a photograph, Thomas. And I'm like, yes, that is a photograph of a removed non-physical constraint.

Here's a photograph of a non-physical constraint, BIM models, because we have to understand and we build things nowadays in three dimensions, but in not in a real world, right? So BIM models allow us, they give us the opportunity to identify non-physical constraints.

Uh, fire is stopping way up above ceiling, like doing a yoga move and it, the same things happen if we don't put in that sleeve or we put it in the wrong place, that's not going to stop the concrete from being poured because Hey, we can always go back in and core drill a hole. But when we have to go back and core drill a hole, can you guarantee with great certainty, Felipe, that you won't disrupt anything that was embedded in that con.

Nope. Not even with x-ray. Not even with x-ray. And Hilti makes the x-ray machine too. Yep. But Hilti definitely, definitely has some products that, that they sell the construction industry that deals with our inability to properly coordinate ahead of time. Or they also sell the, the tool to help us with our ability to coordinate with those sleeves.

And we have to do both. We have to understand sometimes things get installed incorrectly and we do have to, we have to do rework on things, but like things like doing fire caulking, above ceiling, above ducts, above conduits. This is just work that is just poorly designed for human beings. Inside of elevator shafts, all this stuff that you're just, your acceptance gets diminished.

You notice the non-physical constraints, all the disruption. It's all the same as physical constraints. Because what happens is non-physical constraints, if left to their own devices, they become physical constraints. And one thing we study, DPR, is the impact of that. And we actually chart these. And we were showing some of those at the conference this weekend in Scottsdale.

And it's on a huge factor that quality issues that are identified, it's like an S-curve, but like the Mount Everest of S-curves. So like quality issues that are identified in pre-construction and in coordination, when we're doing like VDC coordination. There are, we do find many, but we find exponentially more problems when we do things physical. And the reason why is because a lot of those non-physical constraints turn into physical constraints.

And if those physical constraints aren't caught immediately, they turn into very complex physical constraints, like trying to execute a top of wall firestop over a whole bunch of MEP encumbrances. So we have to understand those. And those become rework activities, and rework activities are poorly designed. They often come with a whole bunch of consequences, like drilling through post-tension cables, through electrical wires, through pipes with water and chemicals in them.

So the potential for safety hazards becomes much higher. The just the statistical if you just put like recordable injuries against time against just work hours you're not it's not it's not designed well the opportunities for for a negative consequence thing increases and if we're in the business of getting out of that or driving towards zero rework and zero injuries then we have to get left of the line we have to get left of the line We have to catch these non-physical constraints.

Great opportunities, BIM modeling, BIM modeling does that, but BIM modeling by itself does not, does not do everything. It doesn't catch everything. And here's a, here's a great example of a risk taking behavior about just the dimensional error. So this is a photo I took of a gentleman who is, who is tied off, but think about the consequences of, of error here, of, of running that, running that DEX. Having that kind of error. That's, that's, that's a big deal.

That's a big deal. So we actually design work for human beings and put them in, into precarious situations. We gotta stop. We have to stop this. So many constraints.

So many. What to do? And this becomes the work-life balance conversation because we can identify and go crazy with identifying constraints. There are just so many. And I always say that there is no balance because life is 100% of the time. If you had a work-life, your right hand on your ratio, the life side is a one. Always. It's always a one. So if you can't, you can never balance that. If one side is a hundred, so you have time for three things.

Working holidays are two. You pick the third, right? And that's oftentimes the case. We have to make trade-offs. Just our effective life. We have to do it. So what we want to do is, is manage resources so that everything that the constraints are going to consume will be supplied by the non-constraint. That's the, one of the focusing steps that we learned in theory of constraints is, is subordinate your resources. The next one is managing non-constraints. Well, not, they won't help since the

overall system's performance is controlled by the constraints. It's a series of gates. So if we actually synchronize. Constrained activities in non-constrained activities, you can actually synchronize these and Jason Schroeder and Felipe teaches us many things that I've learned from you Felipe to do this.

So thank you. But if you actually manage non-constraints, so you actually put things in through a series of gates that you will prevent constraint-free activities, just to run wild through a series of controls, you can actually synchronize. And what does that do? It attacks cognitive bias. And that cognitive bias is this low-hanging fruit. This low-hanging fruit, I can just, I'm hungry, I need to eat, consume, and I'm going to eat this one that's right in front of me that's super,

super easy. And it feels good when you do that. It feels great when we take this low-hanging fruit and we knock 10 items off the list. It feels good, but if we don't go, you know, I'll use the Bay bridge analogy and I know Felipe, you, you've, you've looked down this, this view. I have, I have hundreds, thousands of times. Yeah. I've been trapped in that traffic so many times. It's yes. I have like PTSD with this traffic picture.

We're going towards San Francisco and you have to go through this bottleneck.

The your other opportunity is drive clear down to the 92 which is in mountain view i guess so it's like way down way out of the way so san francisco is basically a peninsula it's basically an island, and there are very few ways to get to it you got the golden gate bridge and you got you got bay ridge here you know you got want to get into the city you got to go through bottlenecks it's the same with with everything that we do in life and at work there are things you have to go through,

So if we have to manage, we have to manage constraints that are on there. So I always say, imagine if there was a car on fire, and there was a, And imagine if there was a car with a leaky tire, and then imagine if you had somebody who's going to run out of fuel, which is the constraint that we need to remove first. Car on fire. Car on fire, because that's going to do damage to the bridge. It's going to affect more things, right?

So the car on fire, we need the fire department. We need people to get the hell out of the way. We need a tow truck. We need a lot of stuff. We need a lot of stuff, but we have to go apply that because if we don't apply all of those resources to it, we won't affect traffic flow whatsoever. And in fact, it'll be worse because now there'll be damage. There'll be a car that's burned and blocking traffic lanes.

So we have to get all these people organized to get the hell over, clear a path to allow for first responders to get over. They have all kinds of lights and sirens. At least they'll get over, but it does take behavioral to get out of the way so that first responders have to get it. So we have to think about when we prioritize constraints in the same manner that oftentimes, yes, we're going to have to apply a whole bunch of resources to removing that constraint.

But it's just that we have to. We have to avoid the cognitive bias. So here comes the constraint log. So this is how you apply this in the real world if you're just doing this out of the gate. There are many, many, many more ways to manage constraints, but this is kind of where you start.

And I'll say this, and there are great people that worked in the United States Marine Corps. They've taught me this idea that this is about ownership. And they have a great saying, and when you go through, I guess, basic training in the United States Marine Corps. They give you a rifle and they teach you this and they drill it into that. This is your rifle. There are many like it, but this one is yours. Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless.

A Marine without a rifle is not a Marine. And a rifle without a Marine is not a Marine. We have to have both. I will learn its weaknesses, its strengths, its parts. I will keep my rifle clean and ready. So if you have a constraint log, it's the same way. It's yours. And if it's poorly organized or if it's without responsible parties or without, if it's without proper due dates, or you're not making these commitments. It's, it's useless fact.

So such a great saying from the Marines, it applies with constraint log. So I put the five focusing steps that we learned in theory of constraints up here, and I'll go through each one as it applies to a constraint log. After you do a constraint log, you. There are many, many more organization and focusing steps that we can apply that can update this constraint log. One being Scrum. Scrum will help you do the elevation. It'll help you do the prioritization. It'll help you decide.

It'll help you to link. It'll help you to do all of the focusing steps. So hopefully, Felipe, if you want to interject with some Scrum principles as they apply here, please do so. So let's go through the five focusing steps. Here's what a filled out constraint log looks like, and this will be for a part of a project. I think it's a project in the Bay area, but let's start with, with these steps. So these steps, the constraint log is only a list of things.

If you look below, there are many other things that you need. You need, you need, you need to be type able to talk to craft. You need fabrication and design drawings and conversation. There, there are vehicles like RFIs and SMETLs, right? They're just transmitting information around. There are prioritization and elevation techniques. Those things happen on schedules and short interval planning, those kinds of things, huddles, and then there's confirmation stuff.

So we actually have to go physically look at stuff. So this is an issue we have. I picked one here. It's an angle. and it's needed an elevation change. So when we fill these things out, we have to fill out all of those five focusing steps. If we don't fill out information devoted to each one of those five focusing steps, this is just a list of to-dos. You're just reporting the news, is what I say. We hear all the time that building enclosure is the number one problem in construction.

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I like it. And that first step that you had, like making it, uh, yeah, identifying the constraint. That's one of the principles that we know from the, a lean production system, like a Toyota, which is making things visual. If you can put it down on paper so people can react to it and have a clear message, then you can have a much greater chance of communicating the right problem or need to the people and the system like scrum, like Thomas said, absolutely will help to make this visual.

And you can take this spreadsheet and turn it into a scrum board as well and run your entire constraint log through the scrum framework on the scrum board. As long as you identify basic things on the tags that must be answered like he has, these are the column headers of each of these rows of the spreadsheet. You can move it, a card through each one of the column headers, I suppose, right?

Yeah, you could do that too. Yeah, you could just make a task and move it through the column headers or just make a standard task card, things that it must have. Like the description. Yeah. Then the resources of who's involved, materials, people, spaces. I love it. Love it. And then last, plan our system. This constraint log is one of the things that you learn is one of the moving parts and pieces of the constraint log.

It is. For LPS. else it starts to make work ready so if you're having trouble with the the the make ready process if you're probably having trouble with managing constraints so the five focusing steps i'm going to do each one identify the constraint i always say if i was going to mail that problem in a letter what's the address what is the physical location of that constraint what is the address so give Give things, everything an address.

Elevation change 10. That would be like a grid column between E and F. There it goes. Boom. It's on floor two between E and F. Give everything an address. Two, decide which resources to devote. Focusing step two. So you have to decide which resources you're going to give to this problem. So this problem in this instance, and these resources change, but in this instance, this is just a snapshot in time that you can see that there's an angle needed, but yeah. Okay, great.

There's an angle needed. Is this thing going to drop from the sky crane or drop from the heavens? No, it needs to be fabricated. Right. So it needs to be fabricated and installed for this RFI. Right. So that there's a little detail there. We need this, this angle that looks like this. It's got some things on it. It bolts to a embed or probably gets welded, but it needs to be fabricated. We need the prescribed direction in dimensions.

So oftentimes the resources that revolve around fabrication and installation might be different. Might be the same, might be different. Depends on the particular situation. Link constraints to a schedule activity or milestone. Right? You have to say, what are the consequences? If this constraint isn't removed, what are the consequences that this might affect in time or to a goal? Link everything to a goal, everything to a goal.

So in this particular snapshot in time, they needed an RFI responded to. So there's a vehicle, a very standardized way in which we document information flow. And that's a request for information process. And that process is separate from your constraint log process, right? So now you're merging two together. And that way you can prioritize the response of RFIs if you have many. If there are many to pick from, which one should I do? I'm not going to do the one that's maybe due tomorrow.

I'm going to do the one that has the most impact. So how do you change that? Prioritization, you use this focusing step. So move, move your due dates up and down in your RFI log accordingly to this constraint log matrix.

The yellow woman prioritize and elevate constraints that's what we were just talking about so once you figured out your resources once you figured out some process steps to make the removal process now you got it you got to elevate things you got to prioritize and elevate i think that's another extreme ownership thing maybe jaco learned some principles from dr goldrad i'm gonna i think keep sending them requests like through twitter or if he's actually going to review the goal,

but maybe I'll have to, I'll have to get more, more creative, maybe I'll just get on the show, but, but you have to prioritize and elevate constraints against your schedule. So if I have the thing that's coming up very near and this issue is going to block something and we're going to have to have to do rework or make delays. Move the dang thing up, and then we have to devote those resources against that prioritization.

So the the most important constraint on a log should be number one right at the top what i mean by that is like your most prioritized your most elevated constraint on your log floats up to the top you have to design it that way so that way things have to be able to move in order so that way if your if your constraint log is on a whiteboard you're going to be constantly erasing and rewriting this is why we need technology for constraint logs because you just can't write

them in order i guess if you had them on a whiteboard you could rewrite the number so you have to understand with one look but then you're creating overburden to make yeah the hunting back and yeah you got the leg look right so put this on a screen i oftentimes say don't put things on screens this is an opportunity to put the screen because we want to float the most important constraint up to the top of the list and that top of the list might change consistently.

So utilize some technology or even utilize an agile system like a scrum board. Cause that one, you can move cards around very easily and restack them in order. And then the last one, and this is the subordinate resources to remove a constraint. And if you don't, if you skip that step, you're, you're just, you're just going back to command and control and not the good command and control. So you have to make an agreement.

You have to make this agreement and you have to make that agreement with the person who's going to remove the constraint. Not just the agreement for them. It's not an assignment. This step is not an assignment. This step is an agreement. So we have to have an actual conversation about removing this commitment or doing the commitment. So I said, I set this one. I think this is summit.

And they made the commitment to avoid the delay to the schedule summit to complete. The RFI response by the 23rd of April. Right. So they've made that commitment and the only person to make that commitment is the person who works at Summit, not the person who works at DPR. It is a, it is the conversation and a commitment that I will promise to do what I've been assigned to do. And I agree to that.

I agree to that commitment. I make a promise. And by the promise, I say, no, I'd give it to you by no later than the 23rd of April. That's how you fill out a constraint. Any comments on that one? No, other than just remind people that make work ready.

That's some last planner system terminology in scrum we call that sprint planning and sprint planning you have to make the work ready as you're bringing it from your backlog to your current sprint or your time box of work whether that be one week or a month that's right that's right better practices and from last planner is that that making work ready or clearing constraints, usually happens in your planning horizon so you're looking into the future so

like thomas said you're You can come to this sheet, make those agreements, change the dates to match the flow, looking at things like schedules and commitments. It's a living thing so that you're always clearing constraints by putting them in priority order.

He said to people, it was very subtle just because the RFI has a due date based on your whatever system you use that just generates that due date, maybe even based on contractual elements, doesn't mean that that's the RFI to get answers next just because it's due next. That's exactly right. But you notice there is oftentimes the opportunity to manually change that date in your systems, in your project management systems.

It's there for a reason. It's there for those who want to use Theory of Constraints. But don't stop there. Do not stop there. I work at DPR. We have some awesome field technology people. So good. And they create the one thing that they created for Florida for flatness, uh, graphs and charts. So that's the graph on the left that says this area is higher. This area is lower based upon this laser scan.

And they, they give you a heat map and the heat map looks like, like a weather forecast for the United States. And the areas that are this color are here. The areas of this color that are there. And within one look, you can see areas that are high and low. I can tell that the area is low at the elevator core and I can see a high area on the upper right, like within instance.

And that that's utilizing bias that utilizes our human brains to, I mean, within one look, if you knew what the colors meant, if you knew that ahead of time, within one look, you instantly know, Hey, we got a problem here. We've got a problem here. So let's, why not do that with your problems at, with your non-physical constraints, make them freaking visual. This is the first time I've ever seen like this type of view with elevations as a heat map. This is gorgeous.

Yeah. yeah so like i could already tell like where i'm going to have to do like you know yeah where i'm going to be spending money refinishing the concrete so i can install door frames and make all my tolerances for closing and it looks like it's in the worst possible place it's happening at all of your door openings on the floor it's just so weird how coincidental that is yeah and the reason why they do that is we can we can overlay the what you just said like door swings

wings and critical dimensions, like elevator landings, because they got to land at a specific spot. Um, so we might have to modify the flooring to match where it has to land. So we do these scans and then we create these reports and these reports are incredibly visual. So I want to say, Hey, why do we just have to use that for, floor tolerances, why don't we just use that for our, our non-visible constraints? So the picture on the right, uh, if you have color ups, great.

If you do zone maps, great. Or I should say good. It is good to have zones. It is good to have. Yes. It's good to have, you know, color chart things. Cause it incredibly, it's the same thing. It organizes your, your brain very rapidly.

Rapidly because we learned when we were you know neanderthals the shape and size and patterns of a saber-toothed tiger that we should either run away or understand very quickly so we understand these patterns rapidly and if you overlay your issues and you even it you color code your issues and you give and you already know those locations you can start to heat map where your problems are And you can just see your eye naturally gravitates that lab area two.

This has got a lot in there. So if I was like lab area two, what's the turnover date for that area? I'd be like that turnover date likely at risk because there is a bunch of open issues that are lingering around that in that lab. And in lab area one, there's one. Lab area two, one. Lab area OFC, area one, there's two. So if you need help with your prioritization, start to heat map these things. And you can be like, whoa, we need to focus.

We need to do a focus session on whatever is burdening area two. And then all of a sudden, if we did this focus section, we can knock out or at least design to go remove these, these constraints in that area, too. So it, it has the same focusing steps. So these visualization techniques, they're probably already like laying around or maybe it's taped to the wall of your trailer and that's good. To make it great is we actually, we overlay our problems on top of those things.

So if we, if we can combine time and space in issues, now we can do prioritization. So I really like this. And if you have VDC people or even just, I use magnets. So we'll put these on the wall and we'll take the issues as a magnet and slap it on there. And then you can just, it's a visual technique that you can do and then put these not in the trailer. I mean, it's good, good to put it in the trailer, but if you actually put this

in that area, say, Hey, this area, this area, this area. at this area. These are problem areas. Please don't cover these up. It becomes a signal to the people at work. And if I was doing work in that area and I would be like, there's five issues in this area. I'm going to make a decision or at least start asking questions. Hey, what's up with these issues, Thomas?

And I'd be like, you're right. Let's rearrange our installation so that you, Mr. Plumber, who are about to install something that you're going to have to rip out and install later in a different location. Instead of doing that, even though it's on the schedule that you're supposed to do that, don't and subordinate your decision-making process against that and that. Here we go. Now, all of a sudden it has this focusing step. It has an organizing effect and now it starts to make decisions for us.

What do you think about allowing a system to make human being decisions for yourself? This is overcoming bias, by the way. This is why I use scrum. I mean, it's a beautiful way, like you said, a powerful way to link winning, just like Goldratt said, creating win-win solutions. Like, why would you demoralize the plumber by forcing them to do something just because the schedule says so, knowing you've got five constraints in the area

and they're going to have rework and somebody's going to pay for that rework. It's not free. Just don't install it yet until you clear the constraints first. That's right. And sometimes the cost to do rework is oftentimes not monetary. It's in energy. It's in poor ergonomic situations, right? So the cost to do rework is not always a time and budget hit to your spine or your elbow or your face, right? There's a physical cost to things. And then there's a non-physical cost to things.

If you, if you're now, my back hurts because I had to do a bunch of work below something, or I had to do yoga poses all day and do a bunch of risk-taking behavior, standing on the top of my scissor lift because I have to do work over the top of it and something that's blocking me, physically blocking me. So now I'm tired, I'm hurting, and now there's this work-life balance that's super lopsided.

I take that home with me and I'm tired. And now if I have underlying issues with mental illness, if I have underlying issues with substance abuse, I just go straight there. And those, those become my medication. Those become my outlet. And if there's people who I love and I live with who love me and who need me for their nurturing and attention and education, I might not have enough energy to devote to them. So there's, there's a real cost to that.

And if that swirls in a highly negative reinforcing cycle. We often choose, and it chooses, sometimes mental illness overcomes us, and it leads us to some serious negative outcomes. So how do we improve mental illness in the construction industry?

You're looking at it. For me, this is my opinion. And you're looking at this right here is if we can organize our work, have conversations, help people make the decisions by overcoming their cognitive biases and their fear and just allow a system to prioritize our work for us and devoting the resources that are of. When we start knocking these out, guess what happens if there's no constraints on a floor and we had a flow chart and we did tack that system works.

So we got to do that. So the last focusing step that Dr. Goldratt teaches us. And how do you know deep your ideas, tech planning areas? Here's proof. Proof. Shameless plug. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, I had to do this right before LCI Congress because there's going to be a bunch of examples and I can't wait. But how do you do make ready planning? This is what it looks like. It's a group of people. I hope the guy playing on his phone is texting out some instructions to somebody.

But you can see you need many things. You need to have conversations. You need to understand locations. We need to have assignments. We need to understand sequence. But Dr. Goldratt says, do not allow inertia to cause a system constraint. Don't allow your culture. Don't allow your, some schedule activity. This has to be done.

And we can't move this. If we just put due dates to things and we subordinate our resources to due dates instead of each other and physical and non-physical and all those things, we'll run into problems. So we have to, we have to decide as a team, what to change. So how do you decide as a team? You, it's a picture like that. You have to decide as a team, you can't decide as a person.

You definitely need a leader and you need a facilitator. You need to have a bunch of information flowing around, but you have to make that decision as a team. So you have to pinpoint your core problems, which have a major impact. That's, that's confronting fear. Don't believe me, get close to some core issues. So go ask some really, really core issue questions with a group of people and they will, it's just a human being. We just avoid those problems.

So if we use systems to tell us, hey, we've got a bunch of problems in area two, let's go decide as a team to, let's tease these issues out and go through them one at a time. So you decide what to change it to. And Dr. Goldratt says what to change to as you find the simplest solution available. What is, what is the most simple? Simple is not easy. Simple does not equal easy. By the way, I didn't put find the easiest solution. It's the most simple and simple uses the fewest resources.

Simple uses the fewest resources. So if you have said easy, the easy button could be, Hey, let's just work overtime for the next six weeks. That's an easy, But just, yeah, just turn the P six activity to the seven day calendar. That could be the easy way. The simplest be like, Hey, hold off on this activity until this one is done. That could be, that could use few resources because you're stopping one activity. And you're allowing a constrained activity to continue slowly through.

That's a decision you have to make as a group. Cause one, you have to stop one work, one unconstrained activity.

You have to gate it like a series of gates. and so simple the my equation is it uses the fewest resources but the dr goldratt says use the simplest solution and then a very important step and i again i use highlighting and colors to make make our highly biased brains focus on it and that's once your solution is known okay we have the solution you have to decide how to cause the change so you actually have to implement, what are the steps to make this change?

And if you do this in a group, all of the sudden, ask assignments and due dates and priorities and these kinds of things, they start to align themselves. And if you're starting to align yourselves in a group, in a team setting, all of a sudden you have these organizing steps. And all of a sudden, if you have flow in a team setting, people get happy. They get satisfied. They enjoy it. And when people have enjoyment and happy in a group setting, then there's camaraderie.

And there's that work that we love to say, that work that we love to say. I said that twice for emphasis. It's teamwork. All of a sudden, it's I am a human being, I am an individual, but I also contribute to a cause that is greater than me. Everybody. And that's how we overcome inertia. And I paused, if you want it, and say anything else. Yeah, let's work into that. What we talk about, we learned in the Scrum Patterns for happiness, purpose, an intrinsic motivator.

Like Thomas said, when we get into that flow state and people start naturally gravitating and aligning, you're working to a higher purpose than yourself as a team to accomplish something this goal like you said do everything towards a goal and scrum we have that we call it the goal and scrum exactly it's called the goal it's called the goal yeah it's the same word it's the same word it's like these great ideas all borrow and build and play

well with each other it's awesome so last planner system, if you're doing it, you can pull plan the constraint removing process. This is a great organizing process within the last plant, last planner framework. That's pull planning. It is a great system to help to organize constraint removal. So if you have a constraint that's super, super complex, and it's kind of overwhelming. Turn, turn 180 degrees to your whiteboard behind you and start pull planning.

If it's, if it's a complex one and that way you can, you can make the simple to understand production plans off of your, that pull planning effort. So even the whole planning on the board might be complex. Let's make it even more simple with a more easy to digest production plan. So this is I wanted to plug the last planner system because doing a constraint log by itself, not the last planner system. And it's a, it's a, it's a, it's an effort that's within it doing pull plans by themselves.

Good. If you start to combine these things and you combine scrum with your constraint, removal process, if you combine it with your constraint removal process, if you provide, if you combine your visualization, BIM models, meetings. Your problem solving techniques, your, your retrospectives that are happen, like your plus deltas, we start to combine these things and stack them on top of each other instead of being like, oh, this is so much extra work.

Your extra work is your wasteful work. Get rid of that. Throw that out. Put that, let's stop doing that and start to stack up these powerful techniques. So the last thing I will say with theory of constraints in construction is you got and combine your efforts with everything else. This is not a one-off process. This is a integrated process.

And then we have some resources that, that, that definitely is missing one construction scrum. I'll throw that on there, but it definitely, you need to get that one, but, but, but get on audible. So what I usually, I tell people to do, go consume the goal. And then immediately after go consume the undoing project because it, it, they link together. And the goal is, okay, I need to have these focusing steps. I have these activities.

I have this prioritization. Then you go to undoing and it's like, change your mind, change your brain, change the way you think about things, overcome bias. The undoing project is, is a story about the gentleman that, that wrote the book thinking fast and slow. So it's like the behind the scenes, behind the, behind the scenes of how you, how to uncover your, your bias and how to, how to work through those things.

Lean Builder, of course, they actually have a blog post, Boost Your Constraint Management Skills. I go straight over there immediately, immediately. And then actually just start discussing, have conversations about constraints. And if you start to use those words, constraints, and you start to talk about physical and non-physical, everybody will start engaging. It's just, it's just, it's just how we work as human beings.

You can sit next to me in an airplane. I can describe why it's so wasteful to stand up if you're in the 20th row, when there's 20 rows of people ahead of you, just, just, just relax. We just set it on an airplane for six hours. We can sit down and enjoy ourselves for another five minutes and then engage with other lean builders, because here's the thing, Felipe, doing any engagement, it just builds upon itself. This is the best part. And there are no boundaries to engagement.

Like Jennifer Lacey and I work for highly competitive companies. And Felipe and me, we both work for highly competitive. Like we are constantly in similar assessments. So there's a competition, but here's the thing. It don't matter. It doesn't matter. You imagine if the competition was Robinson, Wharton, DPR, and Bolt, this is a selection I would like to have if I was an owner. I was like, oh my God. It's going to be tough for the owner to pick. It's a tough decision, right?

Exactly. It's like we always tell people, like when they ask me, you know, why do we do stuff like this? Why don't we collaborate? And I take the answer comes right from Deming himself, William Edwards Deming, Dr. Deming. We learned from him that you need to have good competition in order to increase your skills. So another way that it's, I've heard it said, I think Jocko actually might've said this iron sharpens iron, steel sharpens steel, diamond cuts diamond. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So when we sharpen the saw, I think that's a Stephen Covey reference. That's right. But get even better. So it's like, it has this compounding effect. And the best part is mostly, it's mostly free. Maybe you got to spend some time and money on getting physically located, but we get better and better and better. and our industry needs that. And I'm willing to help. So hopefully we can share this out to the world.

But that's what it is. So you have to learn all these things and you have to learn them. This doesn't come naturally because of bias. And then to get even better, to boost your game further, you have to engage with other people.

And other people sometimes are outside your organization and that's okay. Same for me. Thank you for giving all these beautiful steps and bringing theory constraints to life with your stories. People watching this, you need to get out there and start applying it. And he gave you several examples of how to apply it. It's not the only way to apply it. Thomas uses this in just how he thinks now. He's trained himself with practice to think this way.

And I've told my son the same thing. I said, as you learn what the system is, now subordinate the system to serve you and exploit the system to your benefit. I learned that from Goldratt because it allows you to build these super simple visualization things. It could be a sketch, it could be a color of drawing, it could be anything. It could be a snapshot out of a model.

When we utilize that in the setting, when you bring that to someone out in the field and be like this, this thing right here, it's like, it shoots all that information, all, everything that you brought to that date, it shoots it all into into their eyeballs and it gives them everything it gives them everything that they they might need or at least it helps them understand the situation and when we do that it's so awesome because it's like now it's this is it this

whole thing this idea of respecting people all of the people that that gave and spent energy and did problem solving and all of that was to to serve one purpose and it's to help people it's to help people it's a completely serving process and that when we do that and we actually say my contribution is important but my card contribution is towards a goal and when we align ourselves when we do that stuff it has this reinforcing effect and that reinforcing effect and really

like it in a system it creates enthusiasm Enthusiasm. And when you have enthusiasm and we had DPR, we call it spinning the flywheel because once you get the hardest thing to get a flywheel spinning is the initial push and it's harder. And it is, it's like, this is a lot of work and I got to have meetings and I got to, I got to include people I don't like talking to. I got to like, I have to do this. This is, these are all required steps and

I run through these focusing steps. And once I do that, I've now got the flywheel spinning. And a flywheel, it has a balancing effect on an engine or a system. And that flywheel is hard to start, but once it gets going, it balances the system. And that balancing system, for me, and I learned this from Jesse Fernandez, it's enthusiasm or it's passion or it's knowledge. And when we focus our energy and our effort on that.

We can spend less time devising systems of control or spend less time writing delay letters. We can spend less time angling leverage deals, right? Because there's no choice now. It's like, or the choice is super hard because I was like, all these companies who I, who I want to choose for my project are amazing.

And when we do that, then all of a sudden having assessment about cost or money, it's It's no longer an option because we know, we know there's going to be less to waste in, in this, in this, on this project with this organization and in, in this industry.

So how do we start changing our industry? How do we start helping mental illness? You got to start doing stuff. Can't talk about it. We definitely need to highlight that there is an issue. That's step one. Step two, start doing stuff. So I'm super excited to get this out and then work with, work with super people. I respect deeply Felipe. I got into scrum because you gave me your business card and I was like, what is that? And we didn't type it into Google.

And then it was like, Alice, just down the rabbit hole. Yeah. So you got to engage with people. So I'm just so happy to be a part of what you're doing. That's, this is awesome. Yeah. Likewise, man. And it's like I said before, like when I heard you pipe up from the back of the room, when When we were at that last planner conference and you just asked your questions or made your statements, I knew instantly, like, this guy knows.

This guy knows what's what. You got a live one. Yeah, it's so rare to find. A lot of people talk about things like they know what they're talking about. They just use the buzzwords. But if you've done it yourself, you can hear the difference from another practitioner versus a theoretician. And theory is important, but you have to execute.

You've got to do it. but you got to put it into practice. We call that empirical process control theory or empiricism, which is just fancy words to describe learning by doing. That's right. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you. Very special. Thanks to my guest. I'm Felipe engineer, Manriquez. The EBFC show is created by Felipe and produced by a passion to build easier and better. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, everybody. Let's go build.