Explain in detail Eliyahu Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints
with a brief note on its application in Project Management.
Theory Of Constraints(TOC) is the project management concept
developed by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt
in 1984. It is a organizational
change method that mainly focused on improvement of the profit.It
is essential to have at least one constraints for every
organization. A constraint is the factor that limits the company
from getting more of whatever it tries for , usually it is profit.
The TOC identifies the organization limiting factor that stands
against in the way of achieving the organizational goals and it
systematically improve these limiting factor till the time it
becomes no longer limiting factor. In manufacturing process the
constraint is often referred as bottleneck. Many other
non- manufacturing constraints exists such as sales department
ability to change the market demand into orders.Most of the
business viewed as the set of process that converts the set of
inputs into the salable outputs. TOC takes specific scientific
approach to improvement, it hypothesizes every complex business
which includes manufacturing system as well and many linked
activities , one of them acts as the constraints upon the whole
system. So the final goal of any company is to make the good
profit- both in short term as well as in long terms. TOC provides
the powerful set of tools to achieve the desired goal that
includes- five focusing steps such as identify, exploit,
subordinate, elevate and repeat- these process helps to identify
and eliminate the constraints;The thinking process which include-
Current reality tree, Evaporating cloud tree, Future reality tree
and strategy and the tactics tree - these helps to analyze and
resolve the problems; throughput accounting which uses the core
measures as throughput, investment and operating expenses - these
factors helps to measure the performance and guides the management
decisions.
The goal,
Eliyahu proves
that most of the business have few true constraints, since the
focus needs to be on the constraints, Implementing the theory of
constraints will result in substantial improvement without trying
up a great deal of resources. The TOC is that inherently
prioritizes the improvement activities . The current constraints
will always have top priority. The environment which needs urgent
improvement, TOC offers highly focused methodology for developing
the quick improvement.
The
successful theory of constraints will have the advantages as
follows
- As the
primary goal of the most of the organization is to improve the
profit
- Focusing
all attention of one critical area will makes the improvement
fast
- Optimizing
the constraints will results the more products to be manufacture -
means which improves the product capacity
- The optimizing the constraint will enables the faster and
smoother product flow - reduce the lead time
- It eliminates the bottleneck which means there will be less
work in progress- which in turn reduce the inventory.
Goldratt provides the foundation for achieving the goal and changes
in the business through TOC which includes three measures . These
measures improves the profit using TOC
Throughput: the rate at which the entire business generates the
money through sales for a product or service and not through the
production. Goods are not considered as a asset until and unless
they are sold. throughput represents the all incomes coming into an
organization
Inventory: all the money which the business invest in the item it
intends to sell or the material that the firm intended to transform
into salable items. The inventory represents all the money is tied
up inside the business. It includes raw material, obsolete items,
equipment's, facilities, work in progress and finished goods.
operating Expenses : the money that the organization spends in
converting the inventory into throughput . it represents the money
going out of the organization . for example : depreciation of
assets, direct labor, consumable supplies, utilities etc.
All
these three measures are interrelated. changes in the one measure
will impact the changes in the one or more of the two. Minimizing
the operation expense and inventory will result in improved
throughput.