The Goal and Theory of Constraints

I was checking at the University of Toronto bookstore on Friday afternoon to see if there is any new interesting book coming out. It is now the time when students pick up textbooks for the coming semester. Lots of students were there and shelves for textbooks were all full. Looking through those for business and management, I found The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt . Rotman School is using a novel as a textbook on management. Amazing… I thought.

I spent this past weekend and completed the reading. Nice book. Innovative approach to propagate ideas first; and of course, the ideas are interesting by themselves.

The book is about Theory of Constraints. TOC in essence, is based on a simple observation: the strength of a chain is dictated by its weakest link; therefore, the performance of any value-chain is dictated by its constraint. To maximize the performance of a value-chain, we need to make changes centralized with the constraints. The book suggests a 5 steps implementation of TOC:

1. Identify the constraint.
2. Decide how to exploit the constraint.
3. Subordinate and synchronize everything else to the above decisions.
4. Elevate the performance of the constraint.
5. If in any of the above steps the constraint has shifted, go back to Step 1.

The motivating purposes for this 5 steps approach are:

• Understanding the interdependencies between and across processes that contribute to delivering a product or service,


• Understanding the impact that those interdependencies and normal variability have on their combined, overall performance, and


• Appropriately buffering for interdependencies and normal variability so that that performance can be predictably and consistently high.

Most of specific issues discussed in this book were well or better systematically explored and treated in literatures on lean development, pull, flow, JIT and systems thinking etc.. But the Thinking Process initially advocated in this book and further pushed by people in this TOC movement looks like to have more profound and more lasting impact on industries. The TOC Thinking Process is built upon a framework consisting of three questions: What to Change?, What to Change to?, and How to Cause the Change? As summarized in a white paper from Dr. Goldratt consulting firm,

“The Thinking Processes are a set of tools and processes that allows an individual or group to solve a problem and/or develop an integrated strategy using the rigor and logic of cause-and-effect, beginning with the symptoms and ending with a detailed action plan that coordinates the activities of all those involved in implementing the solution.”

Clarifying the real goals of an effort, from here identifying the constraints in existing process that hinder achieving the goals, and concentrating on changing of those constraints: this is what Alex Rogo’s approach is really about. But just as the story looks like to be more on measurement, motivated professionals who have a clear understanding of the problems in the reality of their companies seldom are puzzled with what are the right things to do; the issues are more on getting people to understand what are the ultimate goals, to walk safely through the politics water and to overcome the obstacles to change.

“Common sense is not common at all”, Mark Twin said. Tracking to the end, we find lack of common sense is the real source for many problems existing in various human efforts. The Goal tried to demonstrate how powerful is common sense and has done a good job.

I plan to read in the future more books by Dr. Goldratt such as It's Not Luck, Critical Chain and Necessary but Not Sufficient.