Who we are – about Synchronix Technologies & its Principals

We (Steve Jackson and Rod Gelhorn – see our consultant biographies) already had a combined 40 years of industrial and consulting experience when we formed Synchronix in 1994. (See Synchronix’ Business Principles here).

So you might already guess that we’re grey-hairs in this business!

By1994 Steve had been an expert in the technology known as Theory of Constraints, or TOC, for 6 years, working with Eli Goldratt’s organization and building on 11 years of ERP/MRP experience (22 implementations) and 6 years of industrial management experience.

Rod had been Plant Manager in 3 different plants, including a start-up from a green field. After leading a Total Quality implementation from the inside of one company, he quit to become a TQM consultant with a leading US quality improvement company.

We got together when we discovered we had a client in common … and they were explicit that they’d improved quality more as a side-effect of a Theory of Constraints implementation than with all their direct quality improvement effort.

Since then, the partnership has been 100% focused on Theory of Constraints implementations.

These days Steve specializes in front-end education and the strategic aspects of the TOC, along with the Sales, Marketing and Throughput Accounting applications.

Rod is now also a long-time Theory of Constraints expert, specializing in the shop floor and in distribution applications. He’s a scheduling genius in terms of finding ways to schedule production environments of all kinds, even where the data is often lousy or non-existent, computer support is minimal, everyone is set in their ways and no-one has time for this project. Check out the case studies & testimonials for examples.

Usually by ourselves, sometimes with veteran colleagues, we provide all the elements involved in an implementation – education, training, consulting (lots of hand-holding in implementations), and even, where appropriate, software.

Software is now an Option … but only an option

For 18 years we avoided using 3rd party software … we worked with whatever systems a company already had in place, and typically used Excel spreadsheets for added functionality. (Unless you saw it, you wouldn’t believe what Rod can achieve with Excel. However, it’s never as robust as dedicated software, and once the scheduling functionality is nailed down for an environment we usually recommend the client has the functionality hard-programmed. Most never bothered … the spreadsheets are that good.)

However, some of the TOC software these days is just too good to ignore, and it shrinks both the implementation lead time and the project budget. Realistically it provides a better implementation, and we expect to work with this software whenever it’s appropriate.

I need to stress that our focus is not on delivering Theory of Constraints; our focus is on delivering results, and we have a superb track record. We use the TOC because it’s simply so powerful; but we have no hesitation in pulling in other bodies of knowledge – elements of Lean, or TQM, for example – as necessary.
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