CRITICAL CHAIN by Eliyahu Goldratt

I am continuing to read “Goldratt” books in a series. This one is stating with the same manner .

There is good debate on MBA in universities. Nowadays it bacame like a fashion for most managers to get an MBA degree. But the benefit of it is quite marginal. It just shows that you have a    continuous ambition to learn something after your BSc or BA degrees. In the book Eliyahu emphasize that the demand on MBA is declining swiftly. University managers are thinking on how  to make MBA degree really profitable for the existing and prospective managers .

In the last decades many management techniques were developped from various industrial organizatios. Namely TQM , JIT (Just in Time) , re-engineering, learning organizations.

Then we come to TOC to the theory of constraints. This come in five steps

1) IDENTIFY the system constraints
2) EXPLOIT the contraints
3) SUBORDINATE everything to the identified constraints
4) ELEVATE thensystems’ constraints
5) START AGAIN

This algoritm must be repeated continously as once you solve one constraint issue your factory than a next constraint point must be identified.

The author is claiming two management system:

-Cost accounting
-Based on throughput

Both are in conflict with each other.

Production is a linked various small steps. One of these steps must be identified as bottle neck. To make a non-stop working this step all other steps must be alligned . Even an excess inventory must be ready in front of this step while waiting Murphy to arrive unexpectedly.

A big project consist of small parts. Every sub-contractor is putting some buffer time for any unexpected delay. This is mostly taken as %50 of timing. When you consider a project of 10-20 steps than you have an incrdible buffer time. No any precaution is taken for early finishing up. Hence you have an idle time.

This book is about how managers are finding solutions while they do their MBA but discussing with each other under supervision of their professors and their company staff...

Avram Aji
10.05.2018