A managerial decision-making web app: Goldratt's evaporating cloud

Abstract

This paper presents a web-based interactive application designed to complement and expand upon a relatively new conflict elimination tool, the evaporating cloud, introduced by Goldratt in the business novel It's Not Luck (Goldratt, E., 1994. It s not luck. Croton-on-Hudson, NY: North River Press). The application allows users to enter information concerning a conflict in a step-by-step manner providing opportunity to revisit input entered in previous steps. It presents the conflict in a simple, logical diagram, and systematically guides the user through the process of surfacing underlying assumptions and developing potential solutions. Based on our experience in a senior-level operations management course, we find that most students consider the web app useful in helping them articulate and resolve conflicts and, thereby, make good decisions. Suggestions for using the application in an operations management class are included.

Keywords:

• decision making
• conflicts
• evaporating cloud
• web app
• active learning

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to express their gratitude to two anonymous reviewers and Dr Lynn Boyd, professor of operations management, for their insightful comments and many significant improvements to the text.

Notes

Notes

1. In the paper, “conflict elimination” is used purposefully instead of conflict resolution, because the aim of the evaporating cloud is different from most conflict resolution tools in that it always seeks a win–win solution instead of a compromise.

2. Since the evaporating cloud is based on necessity logic, it is possible to come up with different clouds for the same situation, depending on which needs are in focus. The example from The Goal is a subset of a larger discussion concerning measures, and attending to the overall discussion would result in a different cloud. In addition, while the example is based on a situation from The Goal, the assumptions and injections are largely the author's ideas about how Alex might use the web app.

3. Twenty years have passed since Goldratt (1990) presented a cloud, the structure of the evaporating cloud is basically the same, but different advice on how to ease the process has emerged over time. The reader is referred to Cohen (2010), an article in the Theory of Constraints Handbook, for further information.