Efficiency · 04 / 07
Theory of Constraints
The throughput of a chain is set by its slowest link. An hour gained outside the bottleneck adds nothing; an hour lost at the bottleneck is lost for the whole system.
system throughput = min (capacity of each stage)
Try it
Work flows down from stage to stage. You have three upgrades of +1 task a day: press + on the stages you want to expand (− to take one back) and see whether more tasks come out.
What you let in
- Throughput
- –
- Work in progress
- –
- Average lead time
- –
- Bottleneck
- –
Where it applies
- Hiring more developers does not speed up delivery if manual testing is the bottleneck.
- In a warehouse, expanding goods-in is pointless if order picking is running at its limit.
- A director who approves everything personally is the constraint of their area: delegating expands the capacity of the system.
Where it comes from
Eliyahu M. Goldratt introduced it in the novel “The Goal” (with Jeff Cox, 1984) and developed it later in “Theory of Constraints” (1990).
Bring it to your organization
In my workshops and diagnoses we work on this and other principles over your team’s real flow of work, with your data rather than the simulation’s. See services or write to me.