The Father of Theory of Constraints is Greatly Missed.
|Eli Goldratt (Eliyahu M Goldratt) was an educator, author, scientist, philosopher, and business leader. But he was, first and foremost, a thinker who provoked others to think. Often characterized as unconventional, stimulating, and "a slayer of sacred cows,” Dr. Goldratt exhorts his audience to examine and reassess their business practices with a fresh, new vision.|
He authored several business novels and non-fiction works, mainly on the application of the theory of constraints to various manufacturing, engineering, and other business processes.The processes are typically modeled as resource flows, the constraints typically represent limits on flows. In his book The Goal, the protagonist is a manager in charge of a troubled manufacturing operation. At any point in time, one particular constraint (such as inadequate capacity at a machine tool) limits total system throughput, and when the constraint is resolved, another constraint becomes the critical one. The plots of Goldratt's stories revolve around identifying the current limiting constraint and raising it, which is followed by finding out which is the next limiting constraint. Another common theme is that the system being analyzed has excess capacity at a number of non-critical points, which, contrary to conventional wisdom, is absolutely essential to ensure constant operation of the constrained resource.