🚀 Exciting News from SAP! SAP now fully support Theory of Constraints.
Last week at the TOCICO conference in Bad Nauheim, SAP, in collaboration with their development partner Alkyone, launched groundbreaking Theory of Constraints (TOC) functionality for both Make-to-Order (MTO) and Make-to-Availability (MTA) processes.
It is available now to all SAP users as a "TOC Package".
Reflecting on my journey in implementing TOC with SAP since the late 1990s, I had the privilege of leading the first TOC implementation at African Explosives.
Back then, we faced the formidable challenge of using SAP’s Logistics Information System (LIS) with custom ABAPs to support the Drum-Buffer-Rope methodology for MTO and Demand-Driven Replenishment for MTA.
Since that initial implementation, I’ve had the honor of leading or advising on TOC projects across various organizations, including
- BC Rail,
- ABB,
- Random House Publishing,
- BHP,
- Ditch Witch,
- Adidas,
- Afrox,
- Shatterprufe,
- Microsoft,
- Tata Steel, and
- Daiwa House.
Each experience reinforced the complexities and risks involved in developing custom functionality within SAP to support TOC principles.
Two important notes here:
1. i shared the long list above to show the range of industries that can benefit from TOC and specifically benefit from implementing and sustainingTOC with SAP”
2. Many of the above projects were completed faster and at lower cost because we used TOC’s Critical Chain to implemwnt SAP.
So we used SAP to implement TOC and TOC to implement SAP 🤓😊
And offcourse … The implementations delivered incredible ROI for the companies. But there was always the challenge that the custom functionality was not supported by SAP.
With SAP's new fully supported TOC functionality, the barriers to effectively implementing TOC solutions for MTA and MTO in SAP have been removed.
In my discussions with Paul Seifriz , a partner of Alkyone, he said the new TOC in SAP means they can do an implementation of TOC for even large SAP customers within just a few months.
I am really thrilled to see SAP fully supporting TOC, paving the way for many many more organizations to be able to access the power of TOC, much more economically and with much lower IT support and other risks than through custom developments or 3rd party software.
I think this is a game-changer for both SAP and many of its customers that could benefit massively from TOC.
SAP customers, through the excellent work of Carol Ptak and Chad Smith from Demand Driven Institute, already has access to DDMRP within SAP.
Now SAP customers also have simple access to TOC.
I'm curious to hear from you if:
a) your company, or a client's company is using SAP
b) you believe they could benefit from TOC but the fact that SAP did not support TOC in the past, was an obstacle to implementing TOC or maybe to sustaining a TOC implementation.
#SAP #TheoryOfConstraints #MTO #MTA #SupplyChainManagement #TOCICO #TOCinSAP #goldratt