伊利雅胡·高德拉特

艾利·高德拉特（英语：Eliyahu M. Goldratt，1947年3月31日—2011年6月11日），是以色列的一名管理学家，限制理论的创始人。

他撰写了多部商业小说和非虚构作品，主要内容是将约束理论应用于各种制造、工程和其他商业流程。

这些过程通常被建模为资源流，而约束通常代表对资源流的限制。在戈德拉特的著作《目标》中，主人公是一位负责管理陷入困境的制造企业的经理。在任何时刻，某个特定的约束（例如机床产能不足）都会限制系统的总吞吐量，而当这个约束被解决后，另一个约束又会成为关键约束。戈德拉特的故事情节围绕着识别当前的限制性约束并提高其产能展开，随后再找出下一个限制性约束。另一个常见的主题是，被分析的系统在一些非关键点上拥有过剩产能，而与传统观念相反，这些过剩产能对于确保受限资源的持续运行至关重要。

著作

描述生产线瓶颈及系统流程优化的小说《目标》(英语：The Goal)（1984年）

描述分销管理、供应链及如何破解冲突等问题为主线的小说《决不靠运气》(1994年)

继《目标》(英语：The Goal)之后，他还写了畅销书《决不靠运气》、《关键链》、《仍然不足够》等书

Eliyahu Moshe Goldratt (Hebrew: אליהו משה גולדרט; March 31, 1947 – June 11, 2011) was an Israeli business management guru. He was the originator of the Optimized Production Technique, the Theory of Constraints (TOC), the Thinking Processes, Drum-Buffer-Rope, Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) and other TOC derived tools.

He was the author of several business novels and non-fiction works, mainly on the application of the theory of constraints to various manufacturing, engineering, and other business processes.

The processes are typically modeled as resource flows, the constraints typically represent limits on flows. In his book The Goal, the protagonist is a manager in charge of a troubled manufacturing operation. At any point in time, one particular constraint (such as inadequate capacity at a machine tool) limits total system throughput, and when the constraint is resolved, another constraint becomes the critical one. The plot of Goldratt's stories revolve around identifying the current limiting constraint and raising it, which is followed by finding out which is the next limiting constraint. Another common theme is that the system being analyzed has excess capacity at a number of non-critical points, which, contrary to conventional wisdom, is essential to ensure constant operation of the constrained resource.

Life

Goldratt was born into a rabbinic family, the son of Avraham-Yehuda Goldrat, in British Mandatory Palestine one year prior to Israel's modern statehood. He obtained a BSc degree from Tel Aviv University, and MSc and PhD degrees from Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. Goldratt died from complications arising from lung cancer on June 11, 2011 in his home in Israel.

Work

Creative Output years

After some experience helping Israeli manufacturers, Goldratt left the academic world to join a company called Creative Output. The company developed and sold a software package, the Optimized Production Technology (OPT). OPT was billed as the first software to provide finite capacity scheduling for production environments. This software and the principles behind it were analyzed by a number of major publications

Goldratt was actively involved in many controversies such as Cost Accounting v Throughput Accounting and culminated in the publication of "A Town Without Walls".

Within the company, Goldratt noticed elements that made him uncomfortable. For instance, in the second edition of The Goal several software implementations did not come close to their estimated potential. After some work, Goldratt discovered that the habits and assumptions (paradigms) of employees and managers prior to using the software were still prominent and negatively influenced results after implementation.

His answer was the book The Goal that took 13 months to write. After completion, the book was not well received by the company staff and by large publishers. Finally, with help from Larry Gadd, the owner of North River Press, the book was published and became a great success. After a while, Goldratt noticed that many implementations were conducted using the book but not the software. This caused further stress in the company and Goldratt tried to capture the essence of how to implement the solution directly in what is now known as Drum-Buffer-Rope method. He published The Race to explain some of the concepts he was working on and developed a course to teach people how to manage their production using a computer simulation game.

Goldratt tried to move the company down the path of "consulting," trying to help people rethink the way they did things, but Creative Output's declining revenues and Goldratt's involvement with things other than the sales of OPT software convinced the shareholders to fire Goldratt (and afterward his closer collaborators).

Avraham Y. Goldratt Institute years

After leaving Creative Output circa 1985, Goldratt created the Avraham Y Goldratt Institute or AGI (named after his father) to promote the Theory of Constraints and help it be implemented worldwide.