The theory of constraints a way of profit improvement at Astra TL

Take the laws of physics, add the human element, wrap the culture of the organization around them, and you have an inkling of the approaches advocated by Eli Goldratt and his legion of “Jonah followers”.

The philosophy of Goldratt's Theory of Constraints (TOC) is well articulated in the literature. What we don't know is how well TOC has been applied in practice (apart from a few isolated instances reported in the foreign literature).What problems are encountered in prac¬tice? What success stories are there to tell?

IMA's Foundation for Applied Research presents the first in-depth evaluation ever of TOC, based on investigations at 21 U.S. and Euro¬pean companies. In addition, this report provides tantalizing glimpses of an intriguing new development in the Theory of Constraints. This new development, called the Thinking Process, is no less than an at¬tempt to bring systematic logic to bear on fundamental organizational problems.

The purpose of this study is to summarize the Theory of Con¬straints (TOC)—particularly those aspects that have not yet appeared in public sources—and to report our observations from visiting a num¬ber of sites at which TOC concepts have been put into practice.

The Theory of Constraints was introduced in 1984 in The Goal, written by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox.2 This unusual book expounded a management theory in the guise of a novel about a plant manager named Alex Rogo. Alex's plant was in deep trouble and in imminent danger of being closed by top management. The plant was rescued by overthrowing time-honored and cherished man¬agement practices that were creating devastating problems. Alex was helped along the way by probing questions posed by Jonah, an Israeli academic who appeared at critical points in the novel.

In The Goal, the company's traditional cost accounting and vari¬ance reporting system was responsible for many of the problems the factory was experiencing. Instead of focusing efforts on activities that would increase profits, the company's traditional management accounting system focused attention mainly on counterproductive efforts to reduce unit product costs. If real improvements had been made in operations, the management accounting system almost in¬variably would have sent inappropriate signals in the form of unfa¬vorable cost variances. Therefore, as a precondition to improving, Alex had to throw out the old cost accounting and variance report¬ing systems. He then completely redesigned the accounting and per¬formance reporting system from the ground up.

The Goal poses a challenge for management accountants. Are our traditional systems, including absorption costing and standard cost variance reports, the source of the problem? One controller has candidly admitted that "by hounding our manufacturing department about efficiencies and standard cost variances, I often moved the com¬pany away from rather than toward our goal. Because I had ignored our system constraints and relied on traditional standard cost calcu¬lations, past decisions made to outsource production and pricing our product were often wrong."3 If existing management accounting practices are creating problems, what should we do to improve them? How would an accounting system such as the one suggested in The Goal operate? Is it practical, or does it suffer from inherent weak¬nesses?

While the business press has reported sporadically about compa¬nies that have implemented ideas from The Goal, there has been no systematic study of such firms.4 Moreover, very little has been re¬ported about companies that have been involved in the newest as¬pects of TOC, which go far beyond the concepts that can be gleaned from reading The Goal or any other publicly available source. This study attempts to remedy both of those deficiencies.

The cigar-smoking Israeli academic in The God/called Jonah bears a striking resemblance to Eliyahu M. Goldratt, the book's principal author and the central figure in the development of TOC. Goldratt has a doctorate in physics and became involved in business almost accidentally. A friend was having difficulty scheduling work at a plant that built chicken coops. Goldratt was intrigued by the problem and conceived an innovative scheduling system that permitted a dramatic increase in completed chicken coops with no increase in operating expenses. Goldratt discovered that there was no satisfactory job shop scheduling software available on the market, so he incorporated his ideas in a software product called OPT that was launched in 1978.