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Books by Dr Eli Goldratt on the Theory of Constraints
 

The Goal by Eliyahu M Goldratt, & Robert E Fox

Eli Goldratt's first book, a novel, in which he used a manufacturing setting to introduce what was to become known as his Theory of Constraints. At that time, the predominant management system in manufacturing in Europe and N. America was ERP's predecessor MRP2 (Manufacturing Resource Planning). Dr Goldratt showed that MRP2 was fatally flawed. 

Amongst many great insights in this book, was his recognition that for effective results, production processes have to be synchronised and managed around the dictates of the major bottleneck (constraint), and that for effective scheduling:

• materials availability,

• task dependencies

• and resource capacities

have to be juggled simultaneously to arrive at a workable schedule. That's in contrast to MRP2 which made the fatal assumption that lead times are fixed and independent of the effects of resource limitations.

(Independent research confirmed - published later by PriceWaterhouse - Dr Goldratt's methods as outperforming both MRP2 and Just In Time, which were the predominant manufacturing management philosophies across the world).

Whilst most of the business books bought remain unread 'shelf-ware', rumour has it that "The Goal" is one of the most widely read business books ever published. 

Dr Goldratt, an Israeli physicist, realised that the approach set out in this book could be generalised and had wider application beyond manufacturing. He went on to develop it into his Theory of Constraints (TOC) and founded educational institutions around the world to spread the word.

Dr Goldratt's Theory of Constraints is at the core of our technology.

The Theory of Constraints and How it Should be Implemented

This is the general background and description of the Theory of Constraints and the 5-step process by which it is applied.

Dr Goldratt also discusses the resistance often exhibited both by individuals and by organisations to any new ideas such as TOC, and how to work through that resistance.

This book describes how the Theory of Constraints is applied, with great effect, to the field of project management. Dr Goldratt analyses the mainstream approach used today to manage projects. In doing so, he identifies the shortcomings in the Critical Path Method (CPM has long been established as an important concept in project management from the early PERT days).

Goldratt proposes, in a way which bears comparison with his analysis of manufacturing planning, that the longest task-dependencies path highlighted by CPM, needs to be replaced by the idea of the Critical Chain. The Critical Chain is the core constraint of a project and involves incorporating both the task dependencies and the resource constraints. Goldratt then derives a management system by which to manage the Critical Chain.

The benefits of the approach... which btt uses, is that overall project timescales can be reduced and delivery dates/deadlines can be more closely managed and protected than traditional project management methods allow.

Software add-ins are commercially available which enable the mechanisms of Critical Chain to be implemented in standard project management software such as MS Project. Btt uses the ProChain add-in software. This software is distributed and supported in the UK by our network partner Focus 5 Systems. We use the ProChain software within our own Critical Chain scheduling system which has been successfully applied to the scheduling of work and resource allocation in analytical laboratories and in commercial software development processes.
 

Eli Goldratt describes the thinking behind the theoretical design of a manufacturing management system based on his TOC principles. Dr Goldratt walks through the thought processes he followed in developing his ideas for managing manufacturing  It enables you to experience Dr Goldratt's personal thinking process in action.

We used the concepts in this book in the design/development of Btt's own Theory of Constraints (TOC) based scheduling system.

Although he has codified his own thinking process into a set of tools, easily the best explanation of those thinking process tools is provided by another author, Professor William H Dettmer.

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