The (short) story of TOC and Goldratt Schools in South Africa
by Philip Viljoen
Principal for Africa and India
TOC teaching and consulting has been done in South Africa from the early 1990′s by the National Productivity Institute lead by Gert Geyser and Ray Immelman, at first, then the AGI, under the leadership of Doug Renecle and later Henning du Preez. The Goldratt Group South Africa (GGSA) was formed in 2001 and was the primary provider of TOC teaching and consulting. In 2004 the Goldratt Group (GG) started to actively market the Viable Vision process in South Africa and in 2005 Philip Viljoen became Goldratt Schools principal with the responsibility to develop Application Expert in Logistics capacity for the Viable Vision projects.
The first Application Expert program was run from 9 May to 5 August 2005 with 16 participants of whom 14 wrote and passed the TOCICO SCL exam.
The first VV projects started towards the end of 2005 and 11 AEP’s were contracted on 4 projects. Today (2009), only one of the VV projects are still active and the AEP’s started their own TOC consultancies which are all active in various TOC projects, ranging from implementing applications and directing small VV projects of their own.
Towards the end of 2006 another AEP was conducted with 11 participants concluding with 10 of them writing and passing the TOCICO SCL exam in early 2007. Two of these AEP’s are active as TOC consultants.
Regular (twice a year) updates are conducted for the AEP’s in an effort to keep abreast with the latest developments in the Goldratt Group and on the new knowledge embedded in the S&T trees.
In 2009 a new program titled Managing the TOC Way will be conducted with 6 participants. This programs aims to develop internal and external TOC facilitators who will be able to lead organizations to achieve the radical improvements possible through the application of TOC as a whole.
Goldratt Schools faculty supports the teaching of TOC at the Gordon Institute of Business Science business school and the Graduate School of Technology Management at the University of Pretoria in the subjects Operations Management, Project Management and Strategic Project Management.