Flow Solutions Workshop
TESTIMONIALS
See some of the amazing results from past attendees of the Flow Solution Workshop series. They utilized what they learned to help simplify processes, boost productivity, unlock significant financial gains and more.
“We're an OEM company that builds potato harvesting and handling equipment.
A lot of times you go to these types of workshops and they’re very dry, boring, and hard to keep people engaged. The way the instructors broke it down for us made it very easy.
We have lots of projects going on at the same time, there is a lot of multitasking happening. One of the things that we applied right away when we got back was to implement a WIP board to help improve flow.
I recommend this to anybody that's trying to improve their business or get better at what they do. The workshop was great, very beneficial. I ended up bringing my entire management crew and our continuous improvement team, and it was well worth it.
Great value for the money, and for what you get out of it. It was awesome. Highly, highly recommend it for any company of any size.”
GaryDee VanOrden - Director of Operations, Spudnik Equipment Co.
“Our company makes test panels. Three members of our operations team attended the TOC Flow Solutions Workshop in Cleveland in Jan 2025. The experience was both invaluable and insightful.
The biggest breakthrough? Goldratt helped us see how excess WIP constrains revenue. Immediately after the workshop, we began slashing stocking levels in our ERP and reducing lead times and the results were immediate and amazing. We’re now focusing on the right orders, increasing revenue while working fewer hours.
Compared to our prior 9 months of pre-TOC history, we have seen remarkable improvements in our plant:
📈 On-Time Delivery improved by 10%
⏱️ Overtime costs dropped by 25%
💰 Revenue and Net Income increased by double digits!
I’ve been part of many large-scale improvement efforts across multiple sites and corporations—but I have NEVER seen such a dramatic impact in such a short time.”
Geoff Fairbanks - Vice President – Operations, ACT Test Panels
"With innovation, comes complexity. Flow Solutions can help."
Kirk Davis
Executive Director, CAMPS
We produce complex parts and sub-assemblies for aerospace and other high-tolerance industries. Bringing our leadership team to the Flow Solutions workshop got everyone speaking the same language about constraints, throughput, and creating a competitive advantage. The hands-on simulations were powerful and made the lesson stick.
Six months after the Flow Solutions Training we can measure consistent impact:
• Four straight months of above-average sales. June set an all-time record.
• On-time delivery improved from the high-70% range to 90%.
• Late orders decreased by 57%.
• At our constraint machines we now run 20% more setups and output hours are up 33%.
We took the workshop ideas, involved the shop floor, and built a plan that fits our reality. If you manufacture and want higher throughput with a calmer workday for your people, Flow Solutions is worth it.”
Andy Oyervides - President & General Manager, Teton Machine Company
“We dramatically simplified our understanding of what our problem was. We were attacking every problem as a component of a thousand pieces and trying to improve every single piece.
The first takeaway from our first session was simplifying our official 12 workflows, each with 6 to 17 steps. Now we have two workflows, each with four steps, and it's already increased throughput in our shop.
Now we're starting to understand why that works. That was the real hit. It's not just that it worked. We understand the concept of why it worked, and that lets us get even deeper into improvement.
Just do it. It's absolutely worth it. It's cheap. It's fast. It’s awesome.”
Kurt Hoge - President & CEO, Reno Type
"I am going to tell my team that we need to be at these workshops. It just gives us a different focus on how we can improve operations."
Gretchen Reimbold
COO, Mid Mountain Materials, INC
“Charter Steel is one of North America’s leading suppliers of carbon and alloy steel bar, rod, and wire.
We appreciate the few days we spent here in the to Flow Solutions training. Definitely good insights on better understanding flow, better understanding how to manage our buffers in our process. Very actionable takeaways, from the way we schedule our plant and the way we manage day-to-day and our processes. There are good actions we can take based on this.
I highly recommend for professionals that are dealing with the day-to-day of operations, supply chain, even if you’re managing a project, there are really good concepts here that can generate good actions.”
Raphael Silveria - Senior Operation Excellence Leader, Charter Steel
FAMCO is a leading manufacturer of HVAC accessories, serving thousands of distributors across North America. Participating in the TOC Flow Solutions workshop provided valuable insights for our management team. We gained clarity on how to effectively identify and prioritize the critical constraints holding back our growth. The workshop equipped us with practical strategies, such as reducing multitasking, implementing full-kit readiness, and better managing the flow of orders through our factory.
This has significantly improved our on-time delivery performance, operational efficiency, enhanced product availability, and allowed us to deliver faster service to our customers. If your organization faces complex operational challenges or is looking for meaningful ways to improve throughput, on-time delivery, and customer satisfaction without increasing costs; I highly recommend attending this workshop.
Jeff McCarthy - CEO
"Theory of Constraints can really help manufacturers leverage their performance by focusing on the true constraints they have."
Rami Goldratt
CEO, Goldratt Group
“The concept and the practical applications of TOC has remained fresh, as it was 30 years ago. And it still can impact businesses in streamlining their operations and making a big impact. Theory of Constraints is not a methodology for incremental continuous improvement.”
Ramesh Rajagopalan - Founder and CEO, SetCONNECT Inc
“The primary impact Theory of Constraints has had in our business has shown in the stability for our people and their understanding of what is important and what gives them the ability to make decisions that benefit the company as a whole instead of them locally wherever they are locally. The value that you take away is going to be a thousand times whatever the cost is, whatever the time commitment is. Just understanding your business as a whole, rather than the local improvements that we all consistently try to make, really represents a step change in the business, not an incremental improvement.”
Francis Hester - CEO, Captain Hook Dumpster Rentals
"Identifying what is really the constraint, to help you improve throughput, that's really what TOC is about."
Vinny Monteiro
Director, Strategic Services, Goldratt Group
“With the hands-on exercises you can easily see how this can fit into your organization so actually being able to see that and see in the exercise the gems build up in front of the constraint is really helpful.”
Karl Sanderson - Operations Manager, IBC Materials & Technologies
“The activities were super helpful just to understand when you're multitasking there's chaos you think you're actually being more efficient, but you can physically see that it takes resources on the team more time to complete a task. I could see there being a tendency to want to just throw resources at it and as an organization that's not really a good use of resources and it's not really scalable or repeatable.”
Andrea Nugent - VP Supply Chain & Operations, Grinds Coffee Pouches
Instead of eliminating constraints, we are learning to exploit the constraints with TOC
David
White-Sanchez
“What happens is during daily work life we are producing parts so we don't focus so we have to get out of there and come to these kind of trainings and that's where you learn more about the theoretical facts behind it. Those things we don't think when we are doing actual manufacturing we are worried about making the parts making the shipment that's why I think this is more important.”
Swapnil Satoor - Engineering Manager, Kimball Electronics
“The hands-on activities that we perform is actually really good to embed some of those mindsets and the thought processes to put them into practice and it helps you actually relate it to some of the throughputs that you have at your organization. So yes, while the initial discussion is theory, you're able to connect it to actual activities that you might see in your organization. They do a very good job of connecting it to things that you may be experiencing and with the other attendees they're able to give you some real world examples how you can connect it to what you might be experiencing in your day-to-day.
Just like with every other training, you get what you put into it so the more you contribute and actively engage in the activities, provide feedback, and actually listen to some of the other participants and network, you'll get the most out of it.”
Adam Hamilton - VP Finance, Indiana Automotive Fasteners
“Going into day one is really more of an operational focus activity and now I think we're looking at that you know sales needs to be a big part of this to maximize profitability of our organization. So, what we talked about with our sales team and our ownership is really getting them involved as to be a part of this whole process. I think it's really the support that that the team here is providing. They have practical case studies and knowledge that they're sharing with us and we can apply that really to our operation as well in our specific situations and just the fact that they're so hands-on and approachable and available even after the class to help us really implement and put in practice.”
Kevin Simac - COO, Kingmaker Foods
“I've been to a lot of lean manufacturing, Six Sigma kind of training, and I thought it was going to be a lot of that. In lean Six Sigma, you're trying to eliminate bottlenecks and constraints, and here we're learning quite the opposite in how to exploit that constraint. That was very new for me, and the hands-on exercises, which I really enjoyed, really helped bring it home.
Some of these trainings you go to, and it's just a sell to the next thing, and that was not this. You walk away with day one actionable items that will make your business better. We got to actually hem in on where the actual problems are, where the constraints were, and where we can actually make a difference, and so I think we heard each other in ways that we hadn't before.
It opened a better, more focused dialogue than I think we've ever had.”
David Sanchez - Director, Continuous Improvement, UEM
“One of the biggest impressions on me was how many common sense, easily applicable things you can get out and start doing right away. TOC kind of focuses on the big picture, which is nice from a management perspective, looking at the organization as a whole in a real common-sense approach to addressing those things. So, I liked that a lot.”
Chris Sulprizio - President, United Engines & Machines
“The biggest takeaway for us was that we were separating two different parts of our process that are really one part and are the actual constraints and JD helped us identify that. We've been looking at things from a much more granular level and when we pulled out and looked at the global level that's where we started to see where we could make improvements. So, after day one we actually reworked our flow from how jobs enter our shop until they leave our shop, how our workflow for production is bifurcated and then minimized those steps to actually increase flow and throughput through that constraint we identified in the first. So, we've made several changes that have increased productivity and morale so it's been really useful.”
Courtney Turley - Shipping & Warehouse Manager, Reno Type
“The main thing that we learned is how to manage our flow, which has allowed us as a business to get more throughput and also create more business for ourselves. One of the things that worked for us the best was limiting the amount of work in progress. That was a game changer for us. It allowed more organization, allowed less mistakes to happen, and I couldn't recommend it enough. It was fantastic.”
Eric Smith - President, Flag Store of Nevada
“In my opinion, I think the TOC workshop is a game changer, not only for me, but for the VSE team who's here today. I think that the concept shared in the workshop are very clear, they're practical, and we can immediately apply it into our product line.
All the activities (0:24) that we had opportunities to do in the workshop were very engaging, very informative will highly recommend a TOC workshop to those who are looking to boost their operation.”
Thi Nguyen - Valley Services Electronics