Managing incidents and service requests a TOC Buffer Management case Brunello Menicucci - CMC™ Management Consultant Abstract. Managing incidents and service requests can be a tough job without a good system of prioritization. As Dr. Eli Goldratt used to say, business management is not only doing the right thing but also avoiding what it shouldn't be done. Introduction In a strong regulated business as the pharmaceutical market, computerized systems have to be evaluated from time to time to confirm compliance to cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practices) requirements. As a consequence, incident management is very important to ensure that a company takes appropriate actions when “unplanned issues that may impact patient safety, products quality and data integrity are addressed before any harm occurs”. Companies should not limit to system failures and data errors: reporting and assessing every error becomes important in identifying the root cause of critical incidents and hence the basis for corrective and preventive actions (CAPA). Problem Definition Needless to say, running Services Operations is subject to disruption. According to ITIL we have an incident if an unplanned interruption or a reduction in quality impacts a service. On the other hand we have a service request when minor (low risk) changes. And lastly, a problem is the unknown cause of one (or more) incident(s) while for a known error the underlying cause has been found and (possibly) a workaround (or a permanent solution) has been identified. Problem Management aims to prevent future issues by addressing incidents’ root causes (or known errors) whereas Incident Management aims to solve the issue(s) affecting the service as soon as possible minimizing impacts on business, and getting back to “normal service operation”. This means that a service must be operated within agreed level (SLA or Service Level Agreement). As you may imagine, every incident management software tool has its own algorithm to prioritize each and every ticket, according to the severity of the disruption. Besides, people in charge of the resolution will be allocated a reasonable period of time, and a due date to resolve the issue. This period of time may obviously vary according to the criticality of the system. Now let’s pretend we have several incidents, some of which with a high priority: how will we know which one to choose first? They are all urgent and may be with a similar due date. Worst than this, after a couple of day we’ll probably have completed different activities on some tickets, while others are ongoing. In this scenario is quite easy to feel overpowered or at least ineffective, and in my experience it becomes hard to respect agreed SLA levels. A possible solution According to TOCICO (Theory of Constraints International Certification Organization) Dictionary, Buffer Management is a control mechanism based on the amount of time (till the due date) or stock remaining used in the execution phase of TOC applications (operations, project and distribution). Buffers are known as a mean to reduce variability. However, in TOC solutions buffers are a bold management tool, useful to provide information about flow’s status, suggesting when and where to take action in case of disruption or deterioration. Moreover, taking notes of disruption causes, will give management the chance to analyze the most possible issues, allowing them to implement continuous improvements. To provide useful informations, buffers are normally divided into three equal areas (or zones) that can measure the grade of variation, where the lower will be identified as “expected”, the middle one “normal” and the higher “abnormal”. According to Deming, in any process we can find two kind of variation which he refers to as “common” or “special” cause of variation. Measurements falling in the “expected” and “normal” buffer’s sections are tied to common variation, inherent to the process (as a perfect process cannot exists), the “abnormal” ones are usually the result of a special variation (Deming W. E., Out of the Crisis, Cambridge - MA , 1986). This is very useful to managers, as they should take care of variations falling in the “abnormal” zone, while little variations, falling into the first or the second sections won’t be a concern. Therefore a buffer can also be seen as a semaphore suggesting where and when to operate effectively: the first zone will be equivalent to a green light, the “normal” zone will be the amber light whereas the “abnormal” area will be the red light. So, how does a manager know when and where to take action? That’s quite simple: he/she only has to measure the buffer consumption rate related to the process being monitored. Buffer consumption rate is measured as the ratio between the time already passed and the total available time: for instance, 2 days on a total of 5 will result in 40% of buffer consumption. This indicates that it falls in the amber (or warning) zone and thus it would be useful to plan for a mitigation in case the next measurement would fall into the red zone. Back to our topic, to properly manage tickets the TOC way, we can look at the time assigned to solve a ticket as a time buffer: this will result in a prioritization of open incidents and service requests’ tickets, according to their Buffer Consumption. As a consequence, tickets will keep their priority label according to classification (incident or service request) and severity, as provided by incident management software tool, however their urgency to deal with will change according to their Buffer Consumption Rate. So, by regularly monitoring the Buffer Consumption Rate of open tickets, managers will know when and where to act to expedite the resolution process or to escalate. This will result in increasing considerably the chance to meet agreed SLAs. Conclusions TOC Buffer Management is a powerful tool well known in either the TOC Project Management (CCPM), Production environment or Replenishment solution. However as seen in the incident management scenario, it can be successfully used in other situations as well. Want to give it a try? Need more information? Feel free to contact us: we’ll be happy to help out. References Deming, W. Edwards; Out of the Crisis, Cambridge - MA, 1986. Cox III, James and Schleier, John G. Jr.; Theory of Constraints Handbook, Mc Grow Hill, 2010