Theory of Constraints (TOC) Blog #1: Identify the Constraints

The Theory of Constraints became an operations standard over 40 years ago with the publishing of “the Goal” in 1984, and it has never been more relevant than it is in today’s highly competitive, highly leveraged world of strong expectations and accountability in the operations and manufacturing world.

Whether you have read the book, seen the movie, or just heard the term, what I have learned firsthand is that once you apply the concepts with pace and rigor, even just one time, you will become a believer in the power of this 5-step process to achieve operational excellence.

In this blog, I will break down each step with the concept and a real-life example (I have many) to help see bring you from concept to implementation.

Step 1: Identify the Constraints. In this step, the goal is to understand what is the critical issue that is affecting your operation. Too often we listen to people, take opinions, polls, trying to create a consensus as to what we want to attack. This is a fundamental mistake, in step 1, DATA SPEAKS.

No matter what your industry, you have data. The key to step on is to collect and analyze all your relevant data and if you don’t have a clear answer, create a plan to collect more key data. The point of Step 1 is separate opinions from the data, look at it without emotion and focus on the single largest issue that you will attack with your team until it is no longer the biggest issue. Please read that again, we are going to attack this identified bottleneck until it is no longer the biggest issue, not until it is eliminated or an 80% reduction or whatever arbitrary SMART Target is set. In TOC, we focus on moving the bottleneck PERIOD. Later we will talk about sustainment and expansion, but for now, in Step 1, the goal is to identify what you are going to attack with the goal of moving it from being your #1 issue.

Example: I have always witnessed that when a pro athlete is asked what their most impactful game is, even if they won a Superbowl / World Series / etc. They will always go back to their roots, pee-wee, high school, the championship that they lost and cried their eyes out. Remembering our roots is what drives us forward, so when I detail this example, I am not thinking of a large $100M Project later in my career, but back when I was a pimple faced supervisor that didn’t have much of a clue.

I was always assigned to the worst areas; in this case it was the WJ Floorpan line that had never made build since its launch. There were tons of ideas and even over $50,000 capital investment put in to make it run better, but nothing helped.

There were 2 operators that ran the middle section of the line, and their productivity was probably at around 50%. Instead of trying to work to cut the job, I asked them to help me manually record every fault that occurred, and I bought coffee and donuts to meet with the Skilled Trades and asked them to work with the operators. Together, we logged over 1000 faults, but one issue kept reoccurring and when we pareto’d the data, it was clear that the stud machines were our top issue. We then Moved to step 2 in TOC, and eventually through applying this process with pace and rigor, we turned that into one of the best producing lines in the plant. I didn’t end up cutting the jobs because they started working more with the increased uptime, so it was a win for them as well being able to keep their job together…on to step 2 in the next TOC blog!!!!