Theory of Constraints

In Goldratt’s classic The Goal, there is a scene where the hero, Alex Rogo, is sitting in his car on the hill overlooking his factory. He is eating pizza and drinking beer while thinking about the question his mentor, Jonah, posed. What is the goal of your company? Alex considers the question and eventually concludes that the goal is to make money. One of the features of the chapter is that his internal dialog forms the initial thinking of what eventually becomes a quantitative and qualitative framework for measuring and improving the performance of the factory. The frameworks are Theory of Constraints and Throughput Accounting.s ...

Whether it be one-stop-shop call centers or unified intake through a shiny website, without dealing with the core issues of throughput and quality, all your customer experience efforts make no difference. Those of you who have spent a little time reading John Seddon will know that he likes to rail against call-centers. He explains how they did not achieve what they were designed to do, and that most of the increase in usage by customers is “failure demand”, customers having to call again because they were not satisfactorily served the first time. What Seddon is weak on is why the service centers do not accomplish their goal. In this article, I will give my explanation using the Theory of Constraints. ...