An Introduction to the TOC Thinking Processes

It’s Not Luck (1994) is a business novel and a sequel to The Goal. The plot continues to follow the advancement of the main character, Alex Rogo, through the corporate ranks of large manufacturer, UniCo.

Author Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt continues to teach the reader his thinking processes through the eyes of Alex Rogo as he learns from his mentor, Jonah. In this book, the primary subjects are the resolution of conflict through the evaporating clouds method and the identification of root causes through the effect-cause-effect method.

In this book the main character, Alex, conducts the reader through the essence of some TOC tools and applications, like the Thinking Processes and the TOC solutions for Marketing, Distribution and how to compose the Strategy of a company.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE TOC THINKING PROCESSES

by Dongxiao Qiu
for the Ross Clouston Scholarship, 2001

Continue reading “An Introduction to the TOC Thinking Processes”

Six Thinking Hats

Six Thinking Hats is a book by Edward de Bono which describes a tool for group discussion and individual thinking involving six colored hats. “Six Thinking Hats” and the associated idea parallel thinking provide a means for groups to plan thinking processes in a detailed and cohesive way, and in doing so to think together more effectively.^[2]

In 2005, the tool found some use in the United Kingdom innovation sector, where it was offered by some facilitation companies and had been trialled within the United Kingdom’s civil service.

The premise of the method is that the human brain thinks in a number of distinct ways which can be deliberately challenged, and hence planned for use in a structured way allowing one to develop tactics for thinking about particular issues. De Bono identifies six distinct directions in which the brain can be challenged. In each of these directions the brain will identify and bring into conscious thought certain aspects of issues being considered (e.g. gut instinct, pessimistic judgement, neutral facts). None of these directions are completely natural ways of thinking, but rather how some of us already represent the results of our thinking. Since the hats do not represent natural modes of thinking, each hat must be used for a limited time only. Also, many will feel that using the hats is unnatural, uncomfortable or even counter productive and against their better judgement. A compelling example presented is sensitivity to “mismatch” stimuli. This is presented as a valuable survival instinct, because, in the natural world: the thing that is out of the ordinary may well be dangerous. This mode is identified as the root of negative judgement and critical thinking. Six distinct directions are identified and assigned a color. The six directions are:

Managing (Blue) – what is the subject? what are we thinking about? what is the goal?
Information (White) – considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?
Emotions (Red) – intuitive or instinctive gut reactions or statements of emotional feeling (but not any justification)
Discernment (Black) – logic applied to identifying reasons to be cautious and conservative
Optimistic response (Yellow) – logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony
Creativity (Green) – statements of provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes

Coloured hats are used as metaphors for each direction. Switching to a direction is symbolized by the act of putting on a coloured hat, either literally or metaphorically. These metaphors allow for a more complete and elaborate segregation of the thinking directions. The six thinking hats indicate problems and solutions about an idea the thinker may come up with.

Yves Morieux

Published on Jan 23, 2014

Why do people feel so miserable and disengaged at work? Because today’s businesses are increasingly and dizzyingly complex — and traditional pillars of management are obsolete, says Yves Morieux. So, he says, it falls to individual employees to navigate the rabbit’s warren of interdependencies. In this energetic talk, Morieux offers six rules for “smart simplicity.” (Rule One: Understand what your colleagues actually do.)

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.
Find closed captions and translated subtitles in many languages athttp://www.ted.com/translate

ProjectLibre

Project management software has the capacity to help plan, organize, and manage resource pools and develop resource estimates. Depending on the sophistication of the software, it can manage estimation and planning, scheduling, cost control and budget management, resource allocation, collaboration software, communication, decision-making, quality management and documentation or administration systems.^[1] Today, numerous PC & browser based project management softwares exist and they are finding their way into almost every type of business.

ProjectLibre

In our interview with Marc O’Brien, co-founder ofProjectLibre, we featured a tool with support for task management, resource allocation, tracking, Gantt charts, and much more. ProjectLibre is a good alternative to a commercial software product like Microsoft Project.

In December 2013, ProjectLibre released version 1.5.8, and a full rewrite of the codebase towards an Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGI) modular architecture is ongoing. This will allow connector modules for better integration with enterprise solutions such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

ProjectLibre is a Java based client tool. During their 2014 Q1 this year, they will release version 2.0. It is not clear yet when the SaaS version will become available.

ProjectLibre was awarded InfoWorld’s “Best of Open Source” in 2013 and ranks in my personal top 3 favorite open source project management tools.

3 biggest mistakes people make in RAID recovery

1. Doing RAID recovery where there is no need to recover RAID

Some people do not know at all whether they use RAID or not. This often happens when a user heard somewhere about RAID technique and arrays, and now he or she thinks that there is a RAID on his or her system. And then, if something fails, these users start recovering their “RAID” even consisting of only one drive. Some may find it hard to believe, but in our statistics it is one of the most common mistakes users made in RAID recovery.

People also often can’t tell a RAID failure from a filesystem failure and apply RAID recovery to the cases where filesystem recovery is needed. In such situations, RAID is working properly while data corruption is caused by something else, for example a filesystem driver problem. Data recovery in these cases is no different from restoring data off a single drive and typically is solved by any data recovery software.

Start with file system recovery if:

you have deleted a file on your RAID system and then cannot find it in the Recycle Bin;
Windows reports RAW file system for the volume managed by RAID;
Windows doesn’t start. It makes sense to add one more disk to the system, put a temporary Windows installation on it not touching the RAID, and then proceed to investigate the condition of the array data using this temporary installation.

Start to recover RAID if:

RAID-controller displays the error message and refuses to bring the array online;
NAS device doesn’t turn on;
RAID array in question is no longer displayed in the list of arrays in a RAID-controller software or in a NAS control panel;
failure has occurred immediately after some action with RAID, for example, after disk replacement in a RAID5.

2. Wrong RAID type

Very often even the most advanced users confuse different RAID types. RAID0 and JBOD are most often confused; however, still relatively large number of errors is the share of RAID5 with RAID10. Although RAID recovery software can tell RAID10 from RAID0, it is unable to distinguish a RAID5 with one disk missing from a RAID10.

However, it should be noted that all RAID recovery software is solely read-only which means that if you confuse the array type, nothing bad will happen. Surely, with the wrong RAID type you do not get the correct RAID configuration. But once you specify the correct RAID type, you will have a good chance of getting a solution for the array.

To avoid this mistake first you should exclude impossible types of RAID following the rules like:

RAID cannot be created on one disk; therefore, if all you have is a single disk, it is for sure a non-RAID system.
JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks, also called Span) cannot be ruled out if you have multiple disks.
If all you have is two disks, it can only be RAID0, RAID1, or JBOD.
Three disks cannot be used for a RAID 6 or RAID 10.
RAID controllers built into common motherboards, like ICH-R series controllers, typically do not support fancy or computationally heavy RAID levels, like RAID 1E or RAID 6. Check the motherboard manual to see what levels are supported.

*Note: Missing disks are not taken into account in all the above considerations.

If you know for sure what the array capacity was, you can estimate what RAID types match to what capacity:

capacity of a RAID 0 and JBOD is equal to the sum of member disks capacity;
RAID 1 is usually created on two disks and total RAID 1 capacity is equal to the capacity of one disk;
in case of a RAID 5 of N disks, the capacity is (N-1) capacities of separate disks; for a RAID 6 is (N-2), where N – the number of disks.

Then, you should go over all the remaining possible types using different modes of data recovery software.

3. Rebuilding a RAID with wrong parameters

If you deal with a fault tolerant array that can survive one or multiple disk failure, then you should be familiar with a rebuild. It is a standard procedure that is typically performed after replacing a failed disk in RAID5, RAID10, or RAID6.

Some people try to force the array online after a problem has occurred, using either default parameters or their best guess about the previous setup. However, there is a catch – some controllers will start a rebuild if the array is forced online without asking you first. This means you have only one chance of doing things right.

If an array was rebuilt using wrong parameters, then in most cases it is impossible to recover data off it. The speed at which an array rebuilds is about 50-100 MB per second. If the data on your array was managed by NTFS which is known to store file metadata (MFT) along the first 2-4 GB of RAID, then after about 30-90 seconds the filesystem records will be significantly damaged. Thus, even if you cancel the synchronization within minutes after the start, you still lose half of the files. Neither data recovery software nor a data recovery lab can help you in such a situation. In case of the fully completed rebuild, the array contains nothing even remotely resembling the previous data.

The only thing that can help to avoid this mistake is to back up all the array member disks before rebuilding the RAID. Alternatively, you can just copy the important data using read-only software.

Written by Elena Pakhomova of www.ReclaiMe.com, specializing in data recovery solutions for various NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices.

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