It turns out that no matter what an organization’s offering is – products and/or services– the methods for most effectively and efficiently managing processes and resources are basically the same. To use another powerful analogy: just as the strength of a chain is dictated by its weakest link, the performance of any value-chain is dictated by its constraint.

Recognizing this, the resulting steps were developed by Dr. Goldratt, to maximize the performance of any value-chain:

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.

Although the 5 Steps of TOC can be applied to every process at every level in an organization, which is how TOC is frequently implemented, the true powers - and results - come from:

• Understanding the interdependencies between and across each of the supply chain links that contribute to delivering a product or service,
• Understanding the impact that those interdependencies and normal variability have on their combined, overall performance of the value chain, and
• Appropriately buffering for interdependencies and variability so that that performance of the chain can be predictably and consistently high.

Understanding these three points allows the 5 Steps of TOC to be much more than simply another methodology for managing processes, but in fact, to be a methodology for consistently and significantly increasing the overall performance of systems.

The five focusing steps can be applied in breaking any constraint. But when the constraint is a policy, measurement or behavior we must determine:

What to change?

What to change to?

How to cause the change?

Answering these three questions – what to change, what to change to and how to cause the change – is elemental to any kind of change. They can be considered the strategic navigation questions for the entire system. Dr. Goldratt developed and refined a logical thinking process to deal with the qualitative problems presented by policy constraints. Because the thinking process is logic based, it isn’t confined to physical constraints, manufacturing systems, or for-profit organizations. The thinking process is applicable to any system as long as one can define the goal of the system.

For more information on internal constraints or the thinking processes, please contact us.