Theory of Constraints Handbook - James Cox Iii [569]
It’s enough to make any rational manager think twice, then thrice, about taking the leap. Yet some have done so—with success—so it’s worth considering the stakes. The Holy Grail of management methods nowadays is process improvement, because competition waits for no one. Therefore, managers are on the lookout for improvement, opportunities, to the point that process improvement has become the new business-as-usual.
Typical process improvement methods look for every possible improvement opportunity, on the assumption that they all add up. However, that’s a fallacy because most improvements in a local context create offsetting pain elsewhere that effectively cancels out the benefit. If you look across an enterprise, what you often see is that one manager’s pain points are another manager’s improvements. Nevertheless, it’s not a one-to-one relationship. It’s common for one manager’s improvement to create pain for tens, hundreds, or even thousands of other managers. That’s why process improvements are often thwarted, abandoned, rolled back, or endured grudgingly. The unintended pain of process improvement can be too great for others to bear willingly. When the pain extends to customers, suppliers, and employees, the enterprise can spiral downward, even though the managers pushing local improvements have noble intentions.
Fortunately, process improvement is a domain where TOC really stands out. Rather than casting the widest possible net, TOC concentrates on genuine process improvements by recognizing that an improvement anywhere other than the constraint is a mirage. Making a non-constraint more efficient accomplishes nothing if it further overloads the constraint. And if a local change doesn’t move the needle at the enterprise level, it’s not really an improvement.
Picture a dozen people all struggling at once to push an enormous crate, with no clear sense of direction or cooperation. Now picture three people easily pulling that crate in unison in just one direction. That’s what TOC does.
This can make TOC sound too good to be true. After all, if it really worked that well, wouldn’t everyone be doing it? Well, no. What the crate analogy left out is everything it takes to get a team pulling in unison. And the obstacles are formidable.
First, there’s the “push, push, push” syndrome. That’s the longstanding management mindset that the way we’ve always done things around here is the way it has to be. Push suppliers. Push schedules. Push workers. Push late jobs. Push shipments. Push salespeople. Push customers to buy more. In an environment like that, getting managers to adopt a system where things are pulled along naturally sounds as far-fetched as a workable time machine. Besides, they ask, what’s a manager to do if there’s nothing to push?
Second, there’s the “summer love” syndrome. Every management innovation wins some avid converts, but infatuation often fades with the next management fad. The best TOC adoption programs skip the infatuation and go straight to implementations with staying power. To do that, however, you have to know where the real constraint is. And that’s harder than it sounds, as we shall see.
Finally, there’s the “shoemaker’s children” syndrome. This one is particularly acute in PSTS, where every partner, principal, professional, scientist, and technician is an expert in something. If you’re a manager in a manufacturing or distribution enterprise seeking to adopt TOC, you’re likely to engage an outside TOC expert because their credentials and reputation earn respect among your peers. However, if you’re a manager in a PSTS enterprise, those TOC experts can be right down the hall. Not only are they busy doing billable work for your firm’s clients, they don’t automatically have extra credibility among your