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Requirements:
The Theory of Constraints, introduced and popularised by the book The Goal. A Process of Ongoing Improvement. by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox, is a body of knowledge that deals with all the obstacles that limit or constraint the organisation’s ability to achieve its goals.
In this work you will use a spreadsheet to conduct a simulation to represent and evaluate the impact of bottlenecks in an industrial setting.
This work will be explained and the methodology, inspired by Goldratt’s book, will be explained and developed during tutorial sessions 1 to 3 (weeks 25 [3], 26 [5], and 29 [7], and 26 [4], 28[6], and 30 [8], depending on your tutorial group) and must be finished and submitted as an individual work by the end of Week 9 (2nd of May 2025).
The submission consists ofthe MS Excel file containing the simulation exercise, and a short essay answering the questions indicated in the statement of the problem.
The essay should also include:
A short description of the experiment.
A thorough reflection about the impact of bottlenecks on a company’s processes. You should show that you clearly understand what a bottleneck is in an industrial process, and how can a manager avoid and/or correct them. Your reflection should link what you observed in the simulation
experiment with real life situations in industrial and service settings.
The report must include some graphic support and tables. Avoid copy and pasting your Excel spreadsheets, these will be revised and assessed together with the report. Your tables and graphics must be designed specifically for your report. Think carefully which is the information you want to summarise and report using graphic support.
Please remember that this essay is NOT expected to have the shape of an academic essay, but an executive report presented to a company’s board. Therefore, you are not expected to include academic references, as you will not do in a business environment.
Further details of the exercise are provided in a document that will be published together with this specification form.
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