My TOC colleague Santiago passed the following note to the Yahoo Constraints Management SIG, from highly respected TOC teacher Dr Holt:
WSU EM Students (past and present):
Dr Van Oyen has created Transformation Logic Tree Software to help student create large Thinking Process Trees is a much easier fashion. I've tried it and it has many exceptional features. For a limited time, you can try it too. Visit the Web Site do download a year trial.
Soon, the software will not be available on the Web for free. I suspect it will be bundled with some TP Texts in the future. Or, TLT could be purchased for a nominal fee.
For now, Dr Van Oyen is looking for critical comments (good and bad) about TLT operation and function. If you try the software, please take the time to give him feedback in return for the free software.
Dr Holt
----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Van Oyen
Subject: A new software tool (free) to enhance teaching of the Thinking Processes of E. Goldratt
Dear faculty member or student with interests in TOC and the Thinking Processes,
From 2000-2005, I taught courses on Goldratt's Thinking Processes to undergraduates, MBA's, and Executive MBA's at Loyola University Chicago. In my experience, my students attempted to implement their work in PowerPoint, Word, or Visio with varying degrees of success and frustration. I felt that my students would greatly benefit from "drawing" software tailored to the tree diagrams of TOC. Has this thought every occurred to you? With an enormous effort from an extremely talented programmer, I can now share with you the software we created for TOC. My small business has invested our creativity and brainpower, but we also acknowledge the helpful feedback and ideas
from Richard Putz, Dr. James Holt, and William Dettmer.
You and your students can download our software (Free) from http://www.transformation-logictree.com We have additional material on the website including 3 quick tutorials in .ppt, .htm, or .pdf at: http://www.transformation-logictree.com/tutorial.htm
I believe this software will make it much easier for you to teach the Thinking Processes, for the students learn it, for groups to work together, and for you to give feedback electronically. We call it Transformation LogicTree, a product of LogicTree Thinkware built for Windows XP, and we believe it will be very valuable to anyone who is seriously building trees (or other diagrams such as flowcharts or fishbone diagrams). TLT is powerful and flexible enough for a variety of diagram styles, but it is very user friendly. Say goodbye to off-page connectors - TLT is perfect for developing and presenting large diagrams (e.g., 3 pages wide and 5 pages high and easily expanded or shrunk as the tree develops). It prints well (WYSIWYG), generating large posters by tiling standard size sheets. TLT automatically generates a Glossary WorkSheet that lists all entity contents on any WorkSheet in the WorkBook. In addition to standard copy/paste editing, TLT has "linked" entities that maintain consistent content while appearing on multiple trees. Edit one and you have edited all linked entities. TLT's novel "Document Explorer" has powerful search/find and "jump-to" capabilities that you'll love. TLT graphics can easily be pasted into Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc. to be integrated into reports.
I hope your class will try out our TLT software (I recommend you begin by quickly skimming through the 3 tutorials to get a sense of TLT) and send me your feedback. We may be able to incorporate a good idea that you may have. TLT will be available along with a TOC Thinking Processes textbook in the near future. Our goal is to keep TLT inexpensive to support students from around the globe in learning and practicing the Thinking Processes and to advance its use in industry.
Sincerely,
Mark Van Oyen, founder of LogicTree Thinkware
