La teoría de restricciones y la optimización como herramientas gerenciales para la programación de la producción : una aplicación en la industria de muebles

The theory of restrictions (TOC) is a philosophy of continuous improvement, which focuses on the weakest link in the chain, to improve the performance of the production system. The purpose of the research was to determine the quantities to be made of each product and its production sequence in a medium furniture industry for kitchens and bathrooms, based on the accounting approaches of the TOC throughput, and alternatively optimization, such as linear programming. The machining stage was identified as a restriction (bottleneck) of the production process with a utilization of 193.71%, which is expected to improve with the application of the TOC methodology, increasing profits by 87.62%. Throughput accounting is a suitable heuristic, easy to understand by production managers, and useful to support decision making, although it does not always guarantee an optimal solution to production mix problem. The continuous improvement procedure developed in this research can be replicated in other furniture factories with the same operating features of the company under study.