Talk:Theory of constraints/Archives/2011

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Recommended Book

Robert Newbold's "Project Management in the Fast Lane" is an excellent book on TOC as applied to projects. Highly recommended! 1574441957 (I am a reader, not the author).

Also, APICS.org is an active promoter and developer of TOC in practice.

Thanks for the article. Wikipedia rocks.

Craig

TOC-related software

Under TOC-related software, may I also recommend the excellent, Free, Open-Source application FreeMind. http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page. It's general-purpose mind-mapping software, but very versatile and easy to use in doing those "Prerequisite Trees" and "Transition Trees" etc. Craig

Application-Specific TOC Solutions

I added the information about plant types, but the wiki formatting looks ugly. Should it be indented or possibly moved somewhere else? Jackvinson 15:04, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Added citation to support TOC's extension into sales and marketing. Sp3 (talk) 22:12, 11 March 2009 (UTC)sp3

Buzzwords

I added the buzzword tag to a section here, which seemed to contain extremely abstract slogans and very obvious statements. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:35, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Smerdis - The section on Thinking Processes quotes almost directly from the TOC literature, such as it is. Is your concern with the introduction to the section or with the list of specific thinking processes? I've removed the word "generic" and the second sentence, as I see that they don't help. Jackvinson 05:48, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Since it´s been more than two months since the issue was discussed and the original tagger didn´t explain his motives, I dropped the buzzword tag. --Luiz Esmiralha 201.51.228.235 09:53, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Opening

"Theory of constraints (TOC) is a body of knowledge on the effective management of (mainly business) organizations, as systems. The author is Eliyahu M. Goldratt, with many others contributing to the body of knowledge." This is very vaguely worded. Does it make sense to say that the theory is the body of knowledge? And Goldratt is the author of what, exactly? He's apparently not the author of the body of knowledge as a whole. This should be replaced with a brief statement of what sort of thing TOC is, and what Goldratt's role is in it. 70.137.182.229 19:20, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

What about something like this (but I think I am saying too much):

Theory of Constraints (TOC) is a systematic way of looking at organizations with the objective of improving the bottom line of the organization. The key concept in TOC is that, while business are frequently complicated, there is an inherent simplicity. Once that inherent simplicity is understood, the lever for effecting change becomes clear. The concept was proposed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt in the 1980's, and he continues to be active in the ongoing development and application of TOC principles.

Jackvinson

In as much as "Theory of Constraints" is a theory as described in his books, Goldratt "invented" it. That is, he came up with a good way to describe a simplification of the sort of optimisation problem that businesses, engineers, etc have been working on forever, and called that simplification the "Theory of Constraints". Although the only bit that can be said to be truly new in all this is the name itself, and the conversion of the explanation of the simplification to the fictionalised novel format, nevertheless no one calls anything else "Theory of Constraints". As far as I can tell, this is because no one has put any effort into popularising dramatic simplifications of optimisation problems.

For the sort of theory that people use when the money really matters, have a look at the article on Linear Programming.

Like mind-mapping and NLP, TOC belongs to the world of airport book readers. It certainly has its use for quick and dirty analysis, just as mind-mapping has its uses (especially for the visual types) in improving memory of the mapped information, and NLP has its uses for changing habits of though, e.g. overcoming irrational anxieties. It's not a particularly academic discipline and is little covered in the academic literature. If you go to a source for academic journals and search for this topic, you'll find a smattering of mainly applied articles, most of which focus, as Goldratt does, on the fact that in production environments the TOC performs better than accounting-based analyses (at least when they are done in the absence of any evaluation of production dynamics). He has a point - don't put finance directors in charge of production. And if you must, teach them TOC because it's a lot better than the only alternative they can face, financial analysis. You know they'll never get to grips with - and therefore never believe the results of - Linear Programming. 81.151.35.42 (talk) 20:32, 16 August 2008 (UTC)J. Lawrence

Several sources I've read define TOC as saying all systems have at least one binding constraint - or words to that effect. This is a no-brainer, and misses the more profound and more useful claim - no real-world system has more than 3 binding constraints. If TOC has any validity as a theory (that is, a hypothesis with evidence to back it up) I believe it lies in this area. Does anyone have references to the work Goldratt did in the 70s that lead to the development of OPT? The main works seem to be out of the public domain, but could still be cited.

Related to Linear Programming, I understand TOC ties in with sensitivity analysis on LP solutions that have multiple binding constraints: the more constraints, the less robustness. This should give some scope to make this article more rigorous. Trevithj (talk) 20:25, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Thinking Tools

Someone commented in the entry "Do you really believe this?????" about the Levels of Buy-in. Once again, these are quoted pretty directly from the TOC community literature. However, there are no "citations" of these concepts. Do we have any? Do we have general citations on the thinking tools? Jackvinson 15:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

External Links

Removed most of these (copied below). Removed the spam tag.

Goldratt UK - Home of the Theory of Constraints - Site is dead.

All of these are essentially the same as the toc-goldratt website. They are all marketing efforts.

I think this whole collection should be removed. These are consultants and afficianados, and there is really nothing new in these websites. Essentially, it's all marketing (I've kept my own website out for this reason).

TOC Consultants and Aficionados

TOC-related software

Inspiration is nice software, but it isn't TOC-specific. Why not list Visio too?

Strategic Transitions: (Higher education TOC templates)
- Inspiration Software: (FMEA cause -> consequence concept mapping)

Jackvinson 03:16, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for being bold. Nposs 03:27, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Flying logic

Flying Logic has a strong emphasis on TOC. Ironwolf (talk) 10:24, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

The Theory of Constraints 5 Focusing Steps

- - Wow, where did these steps come from? They are NOT the Five Focusing steps. At the end, I will type the Five Focusing Steps as referenced by THE GOAL ***--Arogowannabe (talk) 19:22, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Applying the focusing steps to the simulation

Step 0. Make the Goal explicit

Put as many paper boats+hats in production, using the least amount of paper.

Step 1. Identify the Constraint

Usually, the programmer is the constraint. Work piles up in front of them, people behind them are idle a lot of the time.

Step 2. Exploit the Constraint

Get the most out of the constraint resource. For example:

Make sure the programmer is never idle by always having a small amount of work available in a buffer. Don't make the buffer too small, or you will stall the Constraint. Don't make the buffer too big, or you will waste resources in excess inventory. Someone else can handle the rejects from testing, so that the Programmer is not interrupted (but are we not also deriving the programmer of feedback about their work?) Step 3. Subordinate to the Constraint Let the resources who have excess capacity spend some of that capacity to help the Constraint. For example:

The analyst and designer can spend time making sure that the paper they give to the programmer is very neatly folded, so the programmer doesn't waste time The designer can do a bit of the folding work of the programmer, e.g. finishing the hats (only one extra manipulation for the designer), so that the programmer can concentrate on the labour-intensive boats. The tester can perform some testing upstream, to detect quality problems before they reach the Constraint

Running the simulation again after applying focusing steps. Notice how Jaana, The Tester, (with the green shirt) has moved so she can oversee the whole process.

Step 4. Elevate the Constraint

We can raise the throughput rate of the Constraint by:

Giving them training and coaching. We did this in the second round: Fred (sitting, light blue shirt) has now replaced Joerg (standing) as programmer (see picture above), but he needed some folding coaching from Joerg to get up to speed Hiring another Programmer Step 5. Don't let inertia become the Constraint After improving the performance of the Programmer, we can't let up. There's always another bottleneck! In the simulation, the constraint can shift to the Designer. So, we start again from the beginning...

Step 6. Change the System

If the previous steps don't yield any substantive improvements anymore, change the system.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 221.135.63.90 (talk • contribs) --Ronz (talk) 03:13, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

- - There is no Step 6 Change the System, please remove this.

The wording of the Five Focusing Steps from The Goal by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt: Step 1: IDENTIFY the system's constraint (s) Step 2: Decide how to EXPLOIT the system's constraint (s) Step 3: SUBORDINATE everything else to the decisions of Step 2. Step 4: ELEVATE the system's constraint (s) Step 5: Warning!!! If in a previous step a constraint has been broken, go back to Step one, but do not allow INERTIA to become the system's constraint.

Note: the wording of the Five Focusing Steps is very specific, including the "Warning!!!" and purposeful. --Arogowannabe (talk) 19:22, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

What doe Commercial mean at Wikipedia?

Why are some commercial links removed (some of them beiing the most informative websites on the web on this topic), while other purely commercial links to non-informative websites like to the Goldratt commercial sites en ISBN numbers are not removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.133.48.71 (talk) 08:10, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

See WP:EL and WP:SPAM. The fact that sites may be commercial is (or should be) only a small part of the criteria for removal of a link. --Ronz (talk) 16:02, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm somewhat mistified also as to the critera for links being removed. At the moment for instance Critical Chain is full of junk (links). I put my link back there from time to time (www.dbrmfg.co.nz) and it is singularly removed. Meanwhile links with no value (template commerical websites where people don't even admit their names) remain intact. My trim for this is just to forget about Wikipedia. Some things (science for instance) are not consensual undertakings. This page itself on Theory of Constraints is an absolute absymal mess. There is material here that has never been part of this body of knowledge. I don't need my website linked from Wikipedia. But it pains me that so much misinformation is here and yet links to real information are regularly removed, while links that are advertising remain.

I have tried limited editing on this site to try and balance some of the strong (and in my professional opinion - wrong) opinions, without removing those other opinions. But it strikes me as redundant doing again on Wikipedia what is available elsewhere.

Twice recently I have linked at Throughput Accounting. And maybe my error was to link two pages and thus "spam," Nevertheless they have been removed but the one website that remains is a commerical "game" that gives a "prize." How strange.

What concerns me is a fear of paranoia that my links are being systematically cleaned out. Unfortunately I have no time for that type of thing. The question for me is; is Wikipedia a source of information or a source of mis-information?

Wikipedia by virtue of it monopoly squanders all Google searchs on TOC, people who land here ought to be able to jump to other sources as well and decide for themselves where the authorative opinion is. If Wikipedia did not hog Google searches there would be less of a problem with the misinformation present.

Systemica (talk) 07:51, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, let me be more specific. I replaced links yesterday on; Theory of Constraints, Critical Chain Project Management, Thinking Processes, Throughput Accounting, Batch Production, OODA, and Abilene Paradox. I think that all of these links have now been removed. Is this an automated action - the whole "External Link" section has been removed in most cases.

Systemica (talk) 08:36, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this process is rather confounding. The issue, of course, is that it is difficult to decide what is useful external information. Do you include EVERYTHING? And if so, how does that fit into this format? The general Wikipedia guidelines suggest only pertinent external materials. But then what does that mean? To attempt some consistency, I just pulled all the external links from the CCPM page because of all these issues (and because I agree with the quality of the links in general).

For what it's worth, if you are adding the same link across many pages, it is bound to look like advertising or spam, no matter how well-intentioned.

Jackvinson (talk) 13:17, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, maybe I am too new to Wikipedia, I thought that it was there to dissiminate knowledge. I added the material below before seeing you full reply above. Thanks for removing the CCPM links, the consistency is important (fairness). I can live without my link here, but I couldn't understand how so many other junk links could exist.

Systemica (talk) 23:31, 18 July 2008 (UTC) The following was added by Ronz to my talk page. My comments follow afterwards.

If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred from the tone of the edit and the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:

editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with; participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors; linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam); and, avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies. For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for businesses. For more details about what, exactly, constitutes a conflict of interest, please see our conflict of interest guidelines. Thank you. --Ronz (talk) 14:48, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Please consider joining the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#spam.dbrmfg.co.nz --Ronz (talk) 14:48, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

My comments. I feel like Alice Wonderland. If you have knowledge of Theory of Constraints you can not edit because you might have a conflict of interest because you might know someone. If you don't know anything about Theory of Contraints of course you can edit because you won't know anyone. This is why this page is a mess, people who don't know are contributing.

The suggestion that there is a conflict of interest just lowers the whole level of professionalism too low. I welcome you to keep building this body of knowledge with people who don't know what they are talking about.

Systemica (talk) 23:24, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

The solution to conflict of interest problems is simple: use the article talk pages first, if you are not sure if there may be WP:COI concerns. If you think there are WP:COI concerns, definitely use the talk page and ask for someone else to review and add the information for you. --Ronz (talk) 00:03, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Ronz, thank you.

Systemica (talk) 07:12, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. I understand your perspective now. On the pages concerned I would like to do some editing. The link business can wait, I will probably in due course suggest some links for others to decide upon. However, in the Theory of Constraints page there is some opinion that I find negative that I would like to see remove - it is closer to a personal attack. I know the person who is making the claims (but it might not be he who has made the entry). It would be good to tidy this up, and I will do it on the talk page in the next couple of days.

Systemica (talk) 07:19, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad you've stuck with us. Start a new section here to discuss the problems you see. --Ronz (talk) 15:41, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Editing this Entry

The introduction needs help to really describe what is TOC in a few sentences. It feels like there are several elements described there now.

I'm fine with criticisms. TOC isn't perfect. But the criticisms seem very one-sided thus far.

I'm not sure about the "basic principles" section. This doesn't seem to be as central to the TOC concepts as things like the 5 Focusing Steps, T OE and I, and the Thinking Processes. I've removed it for now and replicate it here, in case it needs to be restored.

Basic principles of TOC

The principles are treated as axioms. Goldratt provides^[1],^[2] some indication on why he chose these as basic assumptions or principles upon which to base TOC. The first two are a derivation of Newton's words: natura valde simplex est et sibi consona (nature is exceedingly simple and conformable to herself), while the third is a bridge on how to deal with human reactions and motivations.

Convergence

The first principle: Convergence, also called "Inherent Simplicity" states that "The more complex a system is to describe, the simpler it is to manage." Or that the more interconnected a system is the fewer degrees of freedom it has, and consequently the fewer points must be touched (managed) to impact the whole system. A corollary of this principle is that every organization has at least one constraint active in any given point of time (otherwise it would achieve infinite performance relative to its goal). The more complex and interconnected the organization is the fewer constraints it will have.^[3]

Consistency

The second principle: Consistency, also called "There are No Conflicts in Nature" states that "If two interpretations of a natural phenomenon are in conflict, one or possibly both must be wrong". That is, when in an organization with a common goal, two parts are in conflict (or in a dilemma) this means that the reasoning that led to the conflict must contain at least one flawed assumption.

Respect

The third principle: Respect, also called "People are not Stupid" states that "Even when people do things that seem stupid they have a reason for that behavior". In other words, this principle is stating that people are not inherently irrational.

Jackvinson (talk) 04:00, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Other naming issues

Theory of constraints is an established phrase in aspects of complexity science as well, so the article may need renaming or some sort of note or reference. Reading the material it does seem highly derivative os systems dynamics in general. --Snowded (talk) 04:15, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Dave, nice to see you here. Can you point to something on the term "theory of constraints" within the complexity community? I hadn't seen it previously. Jackvinson (talk) 04:32, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi Jack, another day another forum! The main person is Brian Goodwin although its a generic concept. I use it in my own work: the degree of constraint applied to a system my management can influence if the system is complex or complicated in nature. Aside from this there is a body of work in mathematics. I think the most logical thing here is a hatnote to make it clear what the article is not. Otherwise its clearly a branch (and a minor one) of systems dynamics but one would need to find citations to support that. --Snowded (talk) 05:08, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

We need references!

A standard within Wikipedia is to have plenty of references for the articles. Without the references, this article is liable to be relegated to 2nd class status. My struggle is that there are several books (and some articles) that address similar aspects. I don't know which book describes the definitive view of a specific element of TOC. Most articles are of the applied variety. And there are a number of elements of TOC which are available as white papers or unpublished articles. Jackvinson (talk) 08:31, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Criticism?

The criticism by Trietsch is very difficult to read. I read the opening paragraphs of the Trietsch working paper and get the impression that Trietsch has never observed a TOC implementation of DBR or the other techniques. To say that Goldratt has abandoned DBR, when that is not true. To say that TOC simultaneously discourages and encourages the idea of the "balanced line" is to misunderstand what the Elevate step is all about. I am rather tempted to remove this particular criticism altogether.

On the other hand, the Trietsch criticism may point to something more relevant. The TOC materials - at least the popular books - don't do a whole lot to clearly articulate HOW to implement Thoery of Constraints. The fact that Step 4 appears to be a line balancing exercise is just one aspect of this. Even Goldratt has written and spoken about his frustration that companies don't continually follow the guidance of the 5 Focusing Steps to continue to improve. Jackvinson (talk) 20:12, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Notable Subject?

Who the heck would tag Theory of Constraints as of questionable notability? The other "problem" seems odd too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.231.183.184 (talk) 14:02, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Not sure. I've removed the notability tag. The OR tag could have merit if there's something in the article that is not covered in the multiple published materials, but I'd like to see specifics before re-adding the tag. Kuru (talk) 14:36, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:44, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Theory of Constraints → Theory of constraints –

Per WP:CAPS ("Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization") and WP:TITLE, this is a generic, common term, not a propriety or commercial term, so the article title should be downcased. In addition, WP:MOS says that a compound item should not be upper-cased just because it is abbreviated with caps. Lowercase will match the formatting of related article titles. $Tony (talk)$ 13:48, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Over-capitalization

Having become used to Wikipedia's minimal capitalization style I find reading this article more difficult due to the number of capitalized terms. Is it necessary? Does "Thinking Process" mean something different than "thinking process"? If capitalization of "Theory of Constraints" is a shorthand way to distinguish the Goldratt's concept from other theories of constraints, which other theories are there? If it were called "Goldratt's theory of constraints" we wouldn't capitalize anything but Goldratt.

I also suspect that editors here have fallen into the habit of capitalizing terms that have acronyms like DBR. That's not Wikipedia style. Joja lozzo 20:25, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

The terms like "Thinking Process" and "Drum Buffer Rope" and "Critical Chain Project Management" and "Throughput Accounting" all reference specific terminology and techniques from the TOC body of knowledge. The community that uses these terms traditionally capitalizes them in this way. Isn't that what Wikipedia should respect?

I don't believe TOC is known as "Goldratt's Theory of Constraints" in the general body of literature - he is just known as the first person to articulate it (and one of its heaviest promoters).

Jackvinson (talk) 22:48, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

^ Goldratt, Eliyahu M. (Director, Presenter). TOC - Self Learning Program (Computer CD-ROM). Goldratt Marketing Group. {{cite AV media}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Unknown parameter |date2= ignored (help)
^ Goldratt, Eliyahu M. (Director, Presenter). Necessary and Sufficient (Computer CD-ROM). Goldratt Marketing Group. {{cite AV media}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Unknown parameter |date2= ignored (help)
^ Cite error: The named reference critical was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[SLP-1] Goldratt, Eliyahu M. (Director, Presenter). TOC - Self Learning Program (Computer CD-ROM). Goldratt Marketing Group. {{cite AV media}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Unknown parameter |date2= ignored (help)

[NAS-2] Goldratt, Eliyahu M. (Director, Presenter). Necessary and Sufficient (Computer CD-ROM). Goldratt Marketing Group. {{cite AV media}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Unknown parameter |date2= ignored (help)

[critical-3] Cite error: The named reference critical was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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[2]

[3]

Talk:Theory of constraints/Archives/2011

Recommended Book

TOC-related software

Application-Specific TOC Solutions

Buzzwords

Opening

Thinking Tools

External Links

TOC Consultants and Aficionados

TOC-related software

Flying logic

Further Reading

Business novels

Theory of Constraints

Manufacturing

Supply chain

Strategy

Accounting and finance

Project management

Continuous improvement and the thinking processes

Sales and marketing

Healthcare

Education

Software engineering

Personal leadership application

The Theory of Constraints 5 Focusing Steps

What doe Commercial mean at Wikipedia?

Editing this Entry

Basic principles of TOC

Convergence

Consistency

Respect

Other naming issues

We need references!

Criticism?

Notable Subject?

Requested move

Over-capitalization