The processes defined in Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints have been applied to the areas of Manufacturing, Project Management, Distribution, Marketing, Sales, and Finance. I've listed some examples of applications and solutions related to this theory:
Within manufacturing operations management, the solution seeks to pull materials through the system, rather than push them into the system. This prevents bottlenecking while ensuring resource exploitation.
This is sometimes called Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM), which is a method of planning and managing projects that puts more emphasis on the resources used to execute project tasks. The solution will tend to keep resources levelly loaded, but will require them to be flexible in their scheduling.
The solution for supply chain constraints is to move to a replenishment model, rather than a forecast model. The replenishment model would represent an inventory that is able to meet customer demand while being regularly replenished by some manufacturing facility or other source.
While originally focused on manufacturing and logistics, Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints has expanded into areas of marketing, sales and finance. The application here is surprisingly similar to that of Manufacturing and is sometimes called Customer Manufacturing. The solution is to avoid market bottlenecking while ensuring maximized sales and marketing resources.
The solution for finance and accounting is to apply holistic thinking to the finance application. This has also been called “throughput accounting” and suggests that one examine the impact of investments and operational changes in terms of the impact on the throughput of the business.
