I found this site while I am googling for definition of DBR (Drum Buffer Rope). It is an online book, and totally free for reader. As post title presents, this book mainly introduces the rationale and application of TOC. I think it is very helpful to understand the basic of TOC. If you are interesting on this topic, click here to check the main content of this online book.

What Is Theory Of Constraints?

Theory of Constraints is the invention of Dr Eliyahu Goldratt, an Israeli physicist, educator, and management specialist.

It’s a business philosophy which seeks to strive towards the global objective, or goal, of a system through an understanding of the underlying cause and effect dependency and variation of the system in question.

It is equally applicable to for-profit and not-for-profit organizations for; strategy, personnel, marketing, sales, distribution, manufacturing, design, and project management.

This web site is designed to be an introduction to some of the important concepts of the Theory of Constraints and its successful implementation. It is biased a little toward the manufacturing end of the spectrum. But if you run a hospital for instance and can’t see the parallels, then please let me know.

It is likely that you will have arrived at this material from a number of different directions;

(1) Companies that are already very successful (we aren’t making enough money).

(2) Companies that are not successful and in need of turnaround (we aren’t making any money).

(3) Not-for-profit ventures (we can’t achieve sufficient output with our current funding).

In each case we are making insufficient of whatever it is that the organization needs to make in order to be successful. In other words, we are, in some way, constrained.

Although Theory of Constraints developed out of for-profit based manufacturing, it has a much broader and more general applicability. People in not-for-profit organizations, or service organizations, or a paper-based transaction will find the principles equally relevant and applicable.

2nd IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA2007)是IEEE下属的一个部门学会。5月23-25日在哈尔滨召开，是由IEEE Industrial Electronics Chapter Singapore和哈尔滨工业大学联合举办的。去年投的一篇文章：Multiple Objective Scheduling for Discrete Production System based on Compositional Dispatching Rules被采用，并被划分到System theory session。所以在25日下午，做了一个简单的口头发表，介绍了下自己的研究内容。

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If you are studying on SCM, it is necessary to know what metrics are usually used to evaluate a SCM or do comparison between companies. The following content are extracted from Manufacturing Planning & Control Systems for Supply Chain Management (Fifth edition):

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日本情報システム学会是日本国内的一个学会，隶属于日本电气学会（IEE,The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan）4月20日在宫崎大学举行。

宫崎大学木花校园

年初的时候，以陆阳为第一作者，我第二作者的名义投了一篇论文，因陆阳有事没有从东京回来，就由我代替他在这次学会上做了一个发表。于是就在香港发表的幻灯片的基础上，增加了data mining的内容，再根据论文的内容添加了trade off analysis的东西。老师和我说幻灯片可以用英文，介绍用日文吧，我想了下，还是全部用英文吧，要不我还得去准备日文的口头稿，太麻烦了。20日下午有8个发表，来自宫崎大学，大阪大学，广岛大学，当然还有我这个早稻田的，企业方面的有日立和JR。8个发表，也就我一个人用英文发表，听的人还蛮多的有近十几二十人吧。我的发表后，有3个人提了问题。一个问的是data mining中transaction set的相关问题；一个老外（全场唯一的一个金发，当然要说针对日本人说老外，我也得算上一个！）话归正题，他问我提案的模型解决了原有方法的什么问题。由于他坐的位置离我有5，6米，当时一下子还没听明白他在问什么。看来我的英文口语及听力还得多多加油。最后Chairman问了一个比较简单的问题是关于Single dispatching rule的，我大致解释了下，现在回想起来，觉得对这个解释不太满意，如果当时能补充上single dispatching rule和我所做的dispatching rule combination by AHP的应用范围对比就更好了。发表后能得到别人的提问也是一种荣幸，如果一个发表后，没有人提问题，要么是这个发表实在是太无聊，大家都没在听，或者是幻灯片做得太烂，大家都没听明白。还好我的发表不是。

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IMCES2007(Internation MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists2007)是由IAENG(Internationl association of engineers)举办的一个国际会议，今年的3月21-23日在香港举行。我的一篇论文“Composition Method of Weighted Dispatching rule for Multi Objective Dynamic Job Scheduling”很荣幸的被接受，并在ICINDE(Industrial engineering)Session上做了一个口头发表。除了IMCES2007外，7月，IAENG还在英国伦敦举办WCE2007(World Congress on Engineering)，10月，在美国洛杉矶举办WCECS2007(World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science)。关于IAENG的其它信息，可以在http://www.iaeng.org/about_IAENG.htm网站上查询。

整理了些会议照片，发了上来。

IAENG的横幅

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