1. How was TOC utilized in improving labour utilization?

New Era Corporation is a company dealing in the development of modular systems technology and also in research and development. It is also the largest independent supplier of vehicular components to auto- mobile manufacturers. One of its divisions manufactures a variety of axle products. The axle division uses the latest advanced technological manufacturing systems in a very cost-effective manner. Managers of the division decided to combine TOC and Six Sigma for their improvement effort. The different continuous improvement (CI) strategies like Six Sigma and Theory of Constraints (TOC) have been developed and applied to improve manufacturing system performance. The main objective is to recognize critical customer requirements, identify and validate improvement opportunity and upgrade the business processes. For continuous improvement, theory of constraints uses a systematic approach. The stages of the process implementation are discussed below. Phase 1: Identify the constraint and determine the process to be improved The sales have been decreasing due to a declining production target and there was a need to increase asset capacity without incurring additional capital expenditure. The management team focused on the global impact of the next local improvement suggested by TOC. The effect of the improvement on overall quality of axle and system throughput was used to select the improvement project. The gear cutter operation in the manufacture of the axles was chosen as the target for improvement and it can lead to increase the plant throughput and bottom-line performance.