Would someone be willing to do a quick "for engineers" précis of the core ideas of his theory of constraints?
I ask as I've seen The Goal and some other books of his on a colleague's desk. Have to admit that on the surface it does look like exactly the kind of "management self-help" book that I'd naturally be a bit skeptical of, but it sounds like this guy is somewhat respected amongst the technology crowd so I'd be interested to find out a bit more. Without necessarily going as far as reading a novel about operational management of a factory :)
I have read The Goal, Critical Chain, and It's Not Luck. I wrote a 3 star review of The Goal for Amazon, basically they are interesting and useful for a preview or a review of operations management, but have inadequate technical information for actual implementation. Also, I read an old (1983) project management textbook last year (and some other management books since)and discovered the ideas are not as original as he claimed either.
Quick, possible pointless information about me. I was a Comp Sci Graduate in '08. My first job was writing Advanced Planning and Scheduling Software. His book the goal helped me understand WTF I was writing. In a Complete nutshell it tells you how to identify bottlenecks in your supply/production chain and how to relieve them. It also explains why having a large inventory is bad and a few other simple ideas. Like someone else said now a days its easy to see what these Constraints are once you have some Supply Chain or operations experience. At the time he wrote the books however computers were barely being used in Supply Chain (at least in metals manufacturing) so they were a big deal. I can elaborate more if you want. I just don't want to bore you to death haha.
I ask as I've seen The Goal and some other books of his on a colleague's desk. Have to admit that on the surface it does look like exactly the kind of "management self-help" book that I'd naturally be a bit skeptical of, but it sounds like this guy is somewhat respected amongst the technology crowd so I'd be interested to find out a bit more. Without necessarily going as far as reading a novel about operational management of a factory :)