Track: Operations Management

Abstract

Companies in Bolivia and other developing countries face challenges in staying competitive in the global market. One issue is the lack of defined work methodologies, leading to disorganization and waste of resources. This paper proposes to address this problem by combining two theories, Factory Physics and the Theory of Constraints (TOC), to improve production processes in Bolivian manufacturing firms. Factory physics looks at relationships between quantities and performance, while TOC focuses on identifying and addressing constraints preventing desired performance levels. By combining both methodologies, we developed an improvement strategy and evaluated it through computational simulation models for a Bolivian furniture manufacturing firm. The results suggest that combining these methodologies can significantly increase productivity for Bolivian manufacturing firms.