Goldratt, Eliyahu M.

Eliyahu Moshe Goldratt (March 31, 1947 – June 11, 2011) was a thought leader during the early development of Lean thinking.

His ideas were not actually presented as Lean, though. He focused more on his own ideas, primarily the “Theory of Constraints” and drum-buffer-rope. His basic premise was that you keep looking at ways to pace your production and create flow with an emphasis on reducing delays at constraints in your system.

His most famous work is The Goal, a novel that followed the plight of a manufacturing leader and his mentor through the improvement of an operation. It was unique at the time for taking a story-telling approach rather than a textbook-like rendition of continuous improvement.