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    • br Discussion of the findings This study aimed

    2018-11-06


    Discussion of the findings This study aimed at determining the relationship between constraints management and capacity utilization of tea processing firms in Kenya. This study focused on the constraints management and further tested whether constraints management could lead to improved capacity utilization of the tea processing firms in Kenya. This is supported by Goldratt׳s (1992, 1990) observation that currently, the TOC is a management philosophy that has been applied to manufacturing organizations to improve organizational effectiveness. It was hypothesized that there is a relationship between constraints management and capacity utilization of tea processing firms in Kenya, the research findings confirm the Torin1 that there is a relationship between constraints management and capacity utilization. The results pointed out that the firms should invest more in controlling the marketing constraints to monitor the flow of the products they offer to the marketplace while coordinating the people constraints. The findings concur with Gupta and Boyd (2008) that managing the organizations constraints will lead to better utilization of the available capacity in the organization and improve the overall performance. This empirical evidence gave a clear indication that constraints management is a significant predictor of the firm’s capacity utilization. This empirical evidence is supported by Inman et al. (2009) that there are many beneficial effects of constraints management in improving the organizational performance that have been reported in both manufacturing and services. The research findings point out that the three types of constraints that have a strong positive effect on the tea processing firms’ capacity utilization level are market constraints, people constraints, and equipment constraints management. Cyplik et al. (2009) argued that contrary to conventional thinking, TOC views constraints as positive, not negative, something that should force management to think smarter and be more innovative and they get challenged to achieve more with fewer resources in improving their level of capacity utilization. Lastly, since capacity utilization requires proper coordination in the various transformation processes, effective capacity utilization requires inter-functional coordination to eliminate constraints that commonly affect capacity utilization. The findings from this study are in support of the conclusion by Cyplik et al. (2009) that managing constraints requires inter-functional co-operation in any organization since constraints management determines whether an organization succeeds or fails as a whole.
    Conclusions, implications and suggestions for future research By applying TOC philosophy based on this study, managers will be able to take the correct decisions that will enable their organizations to create competitive advantage and improve their profitability. Specifically, they will be able to study the effects of people constraints, policy constraints and equipment constraints on the overall utilization of capacity in their organizations. Based on this study, managers will understand that instead of overworking the entire system, they should shift their focus to resources at the bottleneck as argued by Tulasi and Rao (2012). Once the Kenyan managers are able to manage the constraints that affect their production systems, they will be in a position to utilize their capacities well and be in a position to contribute to the general economic growth as a result of increased foreign exchange and creation of employment.
    Acknowledgments Authors wish to thank the editor-in-chief and the two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and guidelines. The authors are also grateful for the support received from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.71171027), the Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71421001), the Key Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71431002) and the Program for Liaoning Excellent Talents in University (No. LJQ2012004) and NCET-12-0081. Finally, we thank the respondents from the studied Firms for making this research possible in the first place.