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Subject:
From:
Ryan Grant <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
TechNet E-Mail Forum.
Date:
Thu, 27 Jan 2000 14:22:47 -0700
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Ralph,
        Theory of Constraints is now one of the courses most industrial
engineering programs and even some manufacturing engineering programs
require.  As I have been told, it is an idea that Henry Ford started, later
refined by Edward Demming, and perfected by Toyota.

        The theory can get quite in-depth, but in a nutshell, it is the idea
of determining your slowest step or process on the manufacturing line;
otherwise known as the constraint.  Since nothing can move through the
constraint any faster than the constraint, it makes no sense to produce
things at the other steps faster than the constraint.  If you want to
manufacture things faster than the constraint allows, then speed up the
constraint.

        Many people really have a BIG problem with slowing down other
processes to match the speed of the constraint.  (It's at this point that I
start to argue with people).  No matter how fast things are built at other
points in the process, once it gets to the constraint, the speed by which it
is processed is fixed.  No matter what!!!!.  Building things faster at other
points in the process will never make it go through the constraint any
faster.  Since by definition, it must go through the constraint.

        However, finding the constraint is the hard part.  Most people try
to do it with a stop watch.  I don't feel that a stop watch works at all;
mostly because I have never seen a static manufacturing line.  Typically,
manufacturing lines are dynamic, causing a constraint to move from one hour
to the next.  Statistically, a constraint will occur is one process more
often than any other place.  It is because manufacturing lines are dynamic
that a constraint is not obvious, consequently, people don't see the value
in slowing down a process for some "phantom" constraint.

Good luck
Ryan G.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vaughan, Ralph H [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, January 24, 2000 9:23 AM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      [TN] Theory of Constraints
>
> 'mornin' T-net,
>
> I perusing the want-ads lately, I ran across a manufacturing engineering
> job
> that was looking for familiarity with the 'Theory of Constraints'.  I have
> asked around in mechanical design, design of experiments, and quality
> groups, but no one seems to have ever heard of this.  So now I resort to
> this know-all, see all, do-just-about-all  brain trust.  Anybody heard of
> this?
>
> Thanks
>
> Ralph Vaughan
>
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