Constraint-finance

This is basically the "powerpoint" version of TOC. It is not a how-to guide or a novel like most TOC material. I would recommend buying one copy for any group starting a TOC implementation or needing to present TOC concepts (great slide ideas). It doesn't deserve a place on everyone's desk like some of the other TOC books, but has value for those who have read or seen The Goal and now need to participate in an implementation.

Bob Fox doesn't get enough credit here. He and Eli should get together for another.

Business is back to usual. Tough days are here again. Organizations need to excel to be competitive in whatever they do in the race to retain customers and profits. The last decade of the last century was perhaps an exception to this rule. Now it makes sense to revisit books that show us the means to achieve excellence in operations; books written by Eliyahu Goldratt.

This is a book with a difference from Goldratt. The focus is on getting the concepts straight through illustrations and not in the form of a novel.

The goal of all businesses is to make money in the present as well as in the future. We have measurements like Net Profits, ROI, and Cash Flow to assess bottom line performance. We use the cost concept as a bridge to arrive at these measures. The book challenges the cost concept and looks at using Throughput, Inventory and Operating Expenses as the bridges that will lead us in the right direction. These terms or 'Global Operational Measures" are defined in a way that is different from conventional.

-Throughput - The rate at which the system generates money through sales.
-Inventory- All the money the system invests in purchasing things the system intends to sell.
-Operating Expense- All the money the system spends in turning inventory into throughput.

In order to succeed in the market place, six competitive edge issues are identified - Product (Quality and Engineering), Price (Higher Margins and Lower Investment per unit), Responsiveness (Due-date Performance and Shorter quoted lead-time).

Having defined these measures, the book looks at the critical role of inventory (at all stages). The high inventory syndrome leads to a lower performance in all the competitive edges. The manufacturing system then should get into the mode of "Synchronized Manufacturing". This is a unique combination of concepts like JIT, zero-defect and Drum-Buffer-Rope (DBR) approach. In fact I found that this is the best among all of Goldratt's books to understand the DBR concept. It helps in identifying the Capacity Constraint Resources (CCRs) and balances the entire manufacturing system to towards the globally optimal solution that can achieve our overall goal.

The book contains some interesting exercises at the end to ensue that the concepts are well understood.

A must read for all managers to achieve break through improvements in operations - manufacturing and service. The race is on and is getting hotter than ever. We need to keep pace to remain in this race. The second best may not survive to have another chance.

This book provides practical tools to increase profits for your organization. Gerald Kendall shares the criterion to prioritize/choose themes for improving customer satisfaction. He suggests that one should focus on those issues for improvement so that the customer is either willing to pay a higher price or ready to give you additional volume, or this would prevent the customer from switching over to a competitor. Improving those customer dissatisfactions, that would not result in one of the above, would not benefit your organization at all. I find many such tips through out this book.

I am a Jonah's Jonah focused on eliminating market (external) constraints in a variety of industries. I found this book while taking the External Constraint Course at the Goldratt Institute. While the Eli Goldratt book "Its Not Luck" was inspirational and the Institute class was excellent, "Securing the Future" is what I refer to day by day.

Re-engineering the Manufacturing System by Bob Stein is no book for the novice. Brilliantly conceived and executed it is written for experts in the field of manufacturing by an expert.

Eli Goldratt

Do not bother reading "Critical Chain" novel. This is the book to start with. Read it twice: it has so much new thinking against traditional thought that unless you already has TOC concepts it requires a second reading (as good movies). It is a little conceptual book, but if you want more practical advice, you can continue with books like "Critical Chain Project Management" by Lawrence P. Leach; Advanced Project Portfolio Management and the PMO: Multiplying ROI at Warp Speed by Gerald I. Kendall, Steve C. Rollins; and if you are interested in Software Engineering: Agile Management for Software Engineering: Applying the Theory of Constraints for Business Results by David Anderson.

Excelente libro para todos aquellos que quieran comprender de una manera progresiva y efectiva los fundamentos y estado del arte en la programación de proyectos. No son necesarios conocimientos previos de TOC aunque si son deseables, asi como tener claros conceptos de TQM y análisis de causas raices, al objeto de aplicar con exito las recomendaciones del libro. Outstanding book for those who want to understand in a progressive and straightforward manner the fundamentals of nowadays realistic project scheduling. TOC background is not necessary but preferable for a better understanding of the philosophy behind these pages. Root Cause Analysis and TQM concepts are also desirable to succesfully implement TOC to project management.

The achilles heal of project management, especially in product development, are the estimates of time and resources. Traditional project management approaches do a lousy job of solving this. For example, although traditional PERT was developed to do this, it is not used. (In fact, in most environments PERT is not defined as the tool but as a network diagram because of this.) Finally, there is an effective approach to proactively dealing with inaccuracy in estimates. The critical chain approach can accomplish this, and this is the best book for defining what critical chain is.