The Evolution Of The Theory Of Constraints

In recent years, manufacturing has implemented the change from a seller’s market to buyer’s market. In order to deal with the fierce market competition, enterprises pay much attention on logistics cost. The following problem is how to plan the material flow within the factory and how to manage logistics process between companies. The theory of constraints has been a management theory applied in production, logisitics, and suply chain manangent et al.As Newton discovered the movement of object, Dr. Goldrrat found the general rule of organization operation, namely a simple fact that has been conceales under the complicated management philosophies:any organization is composed of many departments, they depend on each other, just like a part of the same chain, link together and play a important role. And, in genaral,the weakest link in the chain determines the final output of the system. If improvement cannot touch the weakest link,everything is not effective. Only focusing on the weakest link (bottleneck resources) to improve, we will achieve the goal of organization——to make money. This management philosophy has evolved from this simple production scheduling software program into a suite of integrated management tools. In 1984, Dr. Goldratt describes the knowledge body of the Theory of Constraint in 《The Goal》 and proposes a simple and effective method to solve complicated problems in enterprises. Until 1987, the "Theory of Constraint"(TOC) appears as a concept, at the same time, the "Focus process" has also been given a more detailed description,namely Focus Five Steps(FFS). Later, a series of TOC monographs, which are written by Dr. Goldratt, and some meeting documents,that constitute the theoretical basis of the Theory of Constraints.The theory of constraint has had obvious advantages in improving the production activities of company. In 2007, Watson et al. made a comprehensive review of publicly disclosed benefits resulting from implementation of TOC and concluded some data. These findings include:a 70% mean reduction in order-to-delivery lead time, a 65% mean reduction in manufacturing cycle time, a 49% mean reduction in inventory, a 63% mean increase in throughput/revenue, a 44% mean improvement in due date performance.The change of these indicators indicates that the theory of constraints has an important advantage in improving company performance, guiding the production and operation activities of enterprise. However, unfortunately, although this theory is widely used in practice, and brings obvious effect, studies about TOC is fewer. This article will review the development of the theory of constraints, aiming to promote the development of the consititution of TOC and to make it play a bigger role in practice.Based on the above reasons, this paper researches the development of the theory of constraints under the management situation. Specifically, this paper mainly includes five sections. First of all, the introduction part will introduce the background, significance, research methods and theoretical framework of this paper, and its innovation. In section 2, The basic body of TOC will be introduced. And the development of the theory of constraints will be stated in this section 3. In section 4, there are conclusions and suggestions. Finally, the paper points out the limitations of the theory of constraints and the possible future development trend.