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Prof John Seddon 'Systems Thinking for Service Organisations'

27 January 2011, 5.30 pm

Systems Centre Seminar

Venue - Pugsley Lecture Theatre, Queens Building, University of Bristol

Event coordinator - Sophie Causon-Wood

Abstract:

Prof John Seddon is credited with translating the Toyota Production System (TPS) for service organisations. He argues the TPS has wrongly been promulgated as ‘lean tools’, insisting the TPS was developed through understanding and managing the organisation as a system. The man who developed the TPS, Taiichi Ohno had a favourite word: ‘understanding’. And it is understanding that has been lost by assuming the tools developed to solve problems associated with the production of cars at the rate of customer demand will work just as well in service organisations.

Taiichi Ohno discovered some counter-intuitive truths in developing the TPS.

This talk  will illustrate the counter-intuitive truths that wait to be discovered in service organisations. For example:

  • Cost is in flow, not transactions (it illustrates why out-sourcing transactions to ‘low-cost’ suppliers fails)
  • Understanding demand is the greatest lever for improvement (managers wrongly assume that all demand is work to be done and miss this huge opportunity)
  • Performance is governed by the system (hence people management practices are next to worthless)
  • Standardisation should be avoided (it drives up costs and worsens service)

Just as Ohno placed emphasis on studying the system to learn how to improve it, in his talk Prof. Seddon  will show how to study service systems in order to get knowledge as the prerequisite for effective, significant and sustainable change.

Professor John Seddon' bio:

John is visiting professor at Cardiff, Derby and Hull Universities and Managing Director of Vanguard Consulting. Service organisations following his ideas are achieving profound improvements in service, efficiency and morale.  John has been a long-term critic of the UK’s public-sector ‘reform programme’, arguing that reforms (targets and other specifications) make performance worse. John is the author of “Freedom from Command and Control” and “Systems Thinking in the Public Sector”, both available from www.systemsthinking.co.uk