The TOC Evolution of the last 35 years.

Those who learned TOC from the lessons about logistics and production, will probably remember it by the buss word: bottlenecks. The ones who have read the book ‘THE GOAL’, written by Gr Eli Goldratt, will most probably know Herby. This was 1984!

During the implementation of the first applications for production it became clear that Herby’s did also appeared in non-production departments and sometimes created bottlenecks through fixed habits and procedures. To tackle this obstacle E.Goldratt developed a set of techniques (TP) to analyse complex situations and find core problems and under-lying conflicts (including perception- and dogmatic conflicts).

a consensus has been reached about the core-problem it opens the way to develop challenging tactical and strategic plans, that are supported by appropriate tools. This development happened in the period 1992-1994.

In the same period a TOC-solution for projects appeared; known as The Critical Chain. The key for synchronizing the tasks and giving the right priorities to all concerned resources has been materialized by the unique technique of buffermanagement.

While management systems became more and more paperless, a set of IT-solutions have been developed to support customer-oriented implementations. Today more generic solutions are available to manage supply chains, projects, productions and even complex paperless processes.

By the last developments (2005 -> today) all the preceding techniques have been combined into one coherent system-concept that supports the TOC-driven growth.