MANAGEMENT SCIENCE, THEORY OF CONSTRAINTS OPTIMIZED PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY AND LOCAL OPTIMIZATION

This study uses a controlled laboratory experiment to compare the perf ormances of Management Science (MS), Theory of Constraints/Optimized P roduction Technology (TOC/OPT) and Local Optimization (LO) approaches to production planning. The OPT game was used as the experimental inst rument. The subjects were given hint sheets based on MS, TOC/OPT and L O approaches. The results show that production planning by MS and TOC/ OPT approaches improve the performance more than the LO approach. Addi tionally MS was found to improve the performance more than TOC. Statis tical power analysis of the data suggests that the laboratory experime nt had a high power and the tested approaches had a medium to large ef fect on performance. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.