TOC-based performance measures and five focusing steps in a job-shop manufacturing environment

Abstract

Theory of constraints (TOC) views a company as a set of interdependent processes working in harmony to achieve the profit goal of the company as a whole, and thus it emphasizes total system performance over localized measures to guide operational decisions. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of employing TOCbased global performance measures to make operational-decisions (e.g. product mix, continuous improvement, inventory management, production planning and scheduling) to strengthen the internal supply chain in a relatively complex manufacturing environment, i.e. a job shop. An ARENA-based simulation model is presented and a number of scenarios are discussed that provide insights regarding the characteristic features of TOC, such as goals and necessary conditions, performance measures, five-focusing steps for continuous improvement, and drumbuffer-rope scheduling. These insights will assist managers in making important decisions regarding approaches to successful TOC implementations, and will provide academics with a broad range of future research opportunities.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 58 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.