23d TOCPA International Conference, 21-22 March 2016, Tennessee, US
The 23rd TOCPA International Conference was conducted on 21-22 March 2016, in Dollywood’s Dream More Resort, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, by TOCPA together with TOC International as a special event of a get together of long-standing TOC colleagues and friends.
Many thanks to Gerry and Jackie Kendall, from TOC International, for organizing this outstanding TOC event!
Video and PDF materials from the 23d TOCPA International Conference
Photos from the 23d TOCPA International Conference
Participants’ feedback
Gerry and Jackie,
THANK YOU! You all put on an AMAZING conference! I had a blast, met a ton of great folks, and learned an immense amount. The conference was excellent and I really appreciate all the hard work you all put into organizing and making it happen. That is no small feat. Thank you also for taking me under your wings and providing your knowledge and friendship. TOC is a big world unto itself and having people to help you navigate it makes it that much more exciting and enjoyable. Thanks again and I hope to see you before too long!
Beau S. Ganas
I am very happy that I was able to attend and to participate as a presenter at the conference. I got a very good return for my efforts. I enjoyed the spirit of community that I felt during the conference. Not only did I get to see old friends but also to strengthen some other relationships and to meet new people. My presentation gave me the opportunity to get some feedback on the topic organization design and that was valuable to me. I was encouraged by the interest I got from more than a few people in talking after my presentation.
Jeffrey Schraeder
Wonderful get together of old friends and the opportunity for meeting new friends. I appreciated the dedication and hard work required for making this a resounding success. The conference exceeded my expectations. The TOCPA provides a valuable platform for the TOC community. I would not change the format of the conference and have no recommendations to make it better. Hopefully you can maintain the feeling of camaraderie and good will as you grow.
Daniel Walsh
A big THANK YOU for creating the TOCPA event this week. I came to learn and to share and for both you gave me much more than I had hoped for. Learning .. as you know, I am not really an expert in TOC; but I see my role to guide the companies I consult to towards asking TOC experts for advice and guidance. Listening to the presentations (none was boring!) I learnt about many, many opportunities where the TOC approach can add value.
Dieter Legat
This was a great event. Eighteen presentations covering a wide range of topics by seasoned TOC experts. But perhaps the most enjoyable part was hanging around a bunch of like-minded TOC friends from all over the world. Thanks you for making this happen.
John Covington
Jelena, Oded and Gerry,
Great conference. I liked the presentations and even better is the networking with old friends and meeting new ones. We do each other and the world some good, when we get together to share our experiences. The things that come afterwards – what we do with the new knowledge by being emboldened – is the real benefit.
Henry Camp
As group that loves to challenge assumptions and push the boundaries of what is known our TOC community is hard pressed to find anything more satisfying than the TOCPA Conferences. In this last meeting in Tennessee, USA – wonderfully done by Gerry and Jackie – we had a diverse and enthusiastic gathering with local participants as well as several international ones. I am very happy and grateful to have participated in it and I look forward more gatherings like this one.
Humberto Baptista
Dear Gerry and Jackie,
I am very happy that I was able to meet you at the wonderful conference last week. It was a great experience for us to join the special gathering. There were so many thoughtful presentations given by seasoned TOC experts. We deeply appreciate your hospitality.
Ryoma Shiratsuchi
17 presentations in two days looked into important issues of TOC knowledge, implementations and developments in the areas of:
- Project management
- Sales
- Supply chain
- TOC in academia
- Thinking processes
- Managerial decisions
- TOC for healthcare
- Organizational change
Some snapshots from the conference.
The presenters
Gerry Kendall and John Zahora, USA
Fast TOC – How to implement CCPM and DBR in one third of the time with team buy-in
Gerry Kendall has five published books on TOC reflecting his successes in Project Management, Health Care, Viable Vision and Thinking Processes. He has implemented all elements of TOC with his worldwide clients over the past 22 years.
John Zahora is a Jonah’s Jonah, who has successfully implemented TOC in Project Management, Supply Chain and all other aspects of the TOC body of knowledge. He is a qualified Lean expert and a certified Six Sigma green Belt with broad experience and has a proven, useable method to integrate TOC, Lean and Six Sigma.
Kathy Austin, USA
Using Theory of Constraints, Lean & Six Sigma (TOC-LSS) within Delta Air Lines Operations
Results-Driven Leader: Operations|Supply Chains|Projects|Continuous Improvement|High-Performing Teams. Kathy has over 25 years experience using and implementing TOC, Lean, and Six-Sigma and is co-author (with Gerry Kendall) of Advanced Multi-Project Management: Achieving Outstanding Speed and Results with Predictability.
Oded Cohen, Israel
Helping companies on a continuous growth in cases of no decisive competitive edge
Oded Cohen is Co-Founder and Co-President of TOCPA with TOC experience worldwide since 1978. Oded is the author of three fundamental books on TOC, the creator of the U-shape and the Ever Improve approach, and the author of the injection structures for the major TOC logisical solutions.
Jelena Fedurko, Estonia
Practical Issues of Constructing Strategy and Tactic Trees
Jelena Fedurko is Co-Founder and Co-President of TOCPA with over 15 years of TOC implementations in various industries worldwide. She has written four books on Thinking Processes sharing her developments for using major TP tools and co-authered (with Oded Cohen) Theory of Constraints Fundamentals.
Daniel Walsh, USA
CCPM: Assessing Efficacy & Feasibility
Danny Walsh is a TOC educator and implementor of TOC solutions. He has developed transformative and disruptive solutions and successfully implemented them with companies around the world.
Eli Schragenheim, Israel
Decision Support in the TOC Way – Combining Intuition with Numerical Analysis
Eli Schragenheim is an author, software developer, educator, mentor and international management consultant – all part of his thirty years activity in TOC. In 2014 he received the Lifetime Award from TOCICO. Last year Eli has established his blog dedicated to push the TOC body-of-knowledge forward.
Eli’s presentation was planned to be conducted remotely, via internet connecton. Unfortunately, due to technical reasons we did not manage to establish a good enough connection.
Jeffrey Schraeder, USA
Extending TOC into Organization Design
Jeffrey Schraeder works with large organizations incorporating TOC principles. As much of this work is focused on the structure and health of the organization as it is on the organization’s processes. Jeff is currently working with the 60 largest manufacturers in Maryland on energy savings projects.
Henry Camp, USA
Exploiting Market Constraints
Henry Camp is an entrepreneur who started a private equity fund specifically to earn extraordinary returns using TOC. His goal is to end cyclical recessions and depressions worldwide.
Janice Cerveny, USA
Stealth uses of TOC Thinking and Tools in Companies and Academia
Janice Cerveny is an active user of TOC tools and thinking in a variety of forums and settings ranging from her undergraduate and graduate business classes, with for-profit clients in a variety of industries and in her own and other academic institutions. One of her more recent on-going efforts is to work with a predominantly minority-student college to improve STEM faculty course content and delivery and to align efforts of academic advisors and counselors for at-risk students.

Keita Asaine and Ryoma Shiratsuchi, Japan
If CCPM is a solution, then what is the problem?
Keita Asaine is the President of Juntos Co. Ltd., Japan, and a Founding Member of TOCPA. Since 2004 Keita has used TOC as a manager, practitioner, trainer, consultant in various industries and as a lecturer for graduate students at Kyushu Institute of Technology.
Ryoma Shiratsuchi is a manager in Juntos Co. Ltd. and a Founding Member of TOCPA. He has applied TOC since 2007 in the areas of productuon and supply chain management, and CCPM and he teaches Operations Management and Project Management at Education & Research Center of Manufacturing, Kyushu University.
Alejandro Fernandez, Colombia
Improving Sales Link: from Artisans to High Performance Teams
Alejandro Fernandez is a TOC Holistic Expert, CCPM Exepron Trainer and DDMRP Trainer implementing and promoting TOC applications since 1994. Alejandro is a Founding Member of TOCPA. He has translated several TOC books to Spanish and brought TOC educational programs to universities in Colombia.
Dieter Legat, Switzerland
Surf the Waves of Opportunity: TOC based operational leadership
Dieter Legat is an experienced business manager, who has worked for Hewlett Packard, Honeywell and AEG-Telefunken. He has summarized his experience and methods practicing TOC in sales and operational leadership in his books Unblock the power of your sales force! and Surfing the waves of opportunity.
Nerius Jasinavicius, Lithuania
CCPM and Lean Construction
Nerius Jasinavicius is the Founder and managing partner of TOC sprendimai and a Founding Member of TOCPA. Nerius has more than 15 years of TOC exposure, over 30 implementations in production, supply chain, distribution, project management and public services, more than 100 companies trained.
Guillermo A. Taylor (Bill), USA
TOC in US Healthcare Strategy and Operations – Experiences with CCPM in Planned Discharge Date Scheduling.
During the past 14 years Bill has been a TOC Consultant based in Curitiba, Brazil and currently works out of Atlanta, GA. Bill has been associated with the Coca-Cola system for 45 years, as an international executive and also as a consultant, living in six countries and executing projects in more than 30. Bill was on the TOCICO Board for seven years and was the 2011-2012 Chairman of the Board of this organization.
Sadashiv Pandit, India
The S&T and the Red Curve
Sadashiv Pandit is the Executive Chairman of Fleetguard. He is on the Board of Filtrun Gruop of companies, and served as TOCICO Board Memeber.
Humberto R. Baptista, Brazil
TOC Retail Mix Management
Humberto is an active TOC practitioner and researcher since 2004 and has published solutions and applications for Strategy, Finance, Distribution, Industry, Retail (fashion and otherwise), Education and Traffic using TOC and was a member of Goldratt Schools and Goldratt Group for 7 years. Currently runs his own consultancy and a retail company built from the ground up and managed fully with TOC.
Emanuele Strada, Italy
Sharing experience on step 2: Decide how to exploit the system’s constraint
Emanuele is an expert in process modeling with strong experience in applying TOC for process re-engineering and developing logistical solutions in large scale manufacturing companies internationally.
Russ Johnson, USA
Transforming the Competitive Bid Game: A Sub-Contractors Mafia Offer to a General Contractor
Russ Johnson has been teaching and implementing Theory of Constraints, Lean and Six-Sigma/Quality Management tools and concepts at the university level since the mid-1980’s. He has many published articles and professional association presentations on supply chain management, project management, Quality systems/Six-Sigma, lean production and Rapid prototyping/rapid tooling.
The conference was conducted in a beautiful area of Smoky Mountains at Dollywood Dream More Resort In Pigeon Forge, Tennessee