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The Goal

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EIN6339 Operations Engineering

ASSIGNMENT #1: The Goal and Theory of Constraints (TOC)

Shahrouz Ebadian (Shahrouz.Ebadian@gmail.com)

The Goal: Do you think that this is an operational methodology or a philosophy? Please explain.

The Goal is a management-oriented novel that focuses on the concepts of systems management. The fictional novel focuses around Alex Rogo and the problems in his production plant. The plant is constantly behind schedule and unprofitable. Alex is given three months to turn things around or the plant will be shut down.

The Goal introduces the “Theory of Constraints (TOC)” which is an overall management philosophy that adopts the idiom “A chain is no stronger than its weakest link”. This …show more content…

If we can apply The Goal to the world’s most profitable company it seems safe to say that other companies in some shape or form will fall under this umbrella as well.

[pic] Fig 1.0 How to apply Constraint Management to a Production Facility? How about to a Bank? Assume that we can apply constraint management!

A production facility seems like the classical example in terms of analyzing the Theory of Constraints. As time has evolved production facilities have become larger, more complicated and depend on technology more than ever. With that said, even the most advanced of processes have at least one constraint (Theory of Constraints principle) and that constraint must be properly managed.

Following the 5 step process the first thing we need to do is identify the issues/constraints in the system. This is quite broad and can cover anything from issues with human capital down to bottlenecks in the shipping process. To correctly identify the issue or issues that are holding the facility back, the identification process must be extremely detail-oriented and thorough in the discovery process. Without this full scope analysis simple errors can occur which in turn will lead to unexpected or undesired results.

The next steps would be to exploit and subordinate. Once we actually identify the constraint we have to turn the focus to how to get more production within our current capacity limitations. We have to be extremely careful when doing this

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