A review on quality improvement and Theory of Constraints (TOC)

Abstract

This paper presents a review on the Theory of Constraints (TOC) and quality improvement. TOC is one of the continuous improvement concepts that were developed to improve more competitive advantages in entities e.g. price/ cost, product quality, delivery reliability. From all literature reviews addressed here, two groups can be classified: first group research on TOC as a continuous improvement and second group research on TOC combined with other improvement policies such as lean and Six Sigma. The result of the later showed remarkable improvement comparing with the first group. Future researches on TOC will directed towards improving about the combination of TOC and other techniques in operations management and quality improvement. © 2011 IEEE.