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About the Author
John H. Blackstone, Jr., is a Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Georgia. He has taught courses in Operations Management, Productivity Management, and Quality Management and Manufacturing Simulation to graduate and undergraduate students. John was raised in Auburn, Alabama, where he attended primary and secondary schools. After a stint as an accounting clerk in the U.S. Air Force, John attended Auburn University where he received a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Economics. John then attended Texas A&M University where he received a Doctor of Philosophy in Industrial Engineering. John began his teaching career in 1979 at Auburn University and transferred to the University of Georgia in 1983. John was introduced to the concepts of Eli Goldratt when he read an article in Fortune in the fall of 1983 and attended a lecture by Bob Fox at the APICS Zero Inventory Crusade that same year. When The Goal was published in 1984, John began using the book as part of his Operations Management course and continues to use it. John attended a Jonah Course in January 1989, and for about three years helped to teach the course to both practitioners and academics. John has authored or coauthored 40 academic articles, several of which have TOC as a topic. He is especially interested in studying the ideal shape and quantity of protective capacity in various situations. He has also authored or coauthored four academic textbooks. John is married to the former Melissa Swift and has four children and four grandchildren.
CHAPTER 8
DBR, Buffer Management, and VATI Flow Classification
Mokshagundam (Shri) Srikanth
Introduction
The Theory of Constraints (TOC) provides a simple and practical approach to the problem of managing complex systems. In this chapter, we discuss the application of TOC to production or manufacturing environments. Production/manufacturing environments are among the most complex of systems, characterized by high levels of dependency and variability. Planning the work of the many resources (often 100 or more), procuring the supply of materials from vendors, and coordinating all of these tasks in such a way as to meet committed delivery dates are truly challenging tasks. The development of computers and computer-based planning systems has been a major facilitator for these challenging tasks. Unfortunately, computers have not been a panacea and, in many ways, the use of computers has aggravated the problem—for example, it has been the author’s experience that the nervousness1 in manufacturing supply chains is higher when the supply chain is managed by a sophisticated Enterprise Resources Planning