In summary, both Ford and Ohno followed four concepts (from now on we’ll refer to them as the concepts of flow): Improving flow (or equivalently lead… - Eliyahu M. Goldratt

You’re right,” I say. And then, “It’s a little odd to call the market or the system of material release a bottleneck. Why don’t we change the word, to . . .” “Constraint?” Stacey suggests. We correct it on the board. Then we just sit there admiring our work.

"While they go get the others, I figure out the details. The system I’ve set up is intended to "process’’ matches. It does this by moving a quantity of match sticks out of their box, and through each of the bowls in succession. The dice determine how many matches can be moved from one bowl to the next. The dice represent the capacity of each resource, each bowl; the set of bowls are my dependent events, my stages of production. Each has exactly the same capacity as the others, but its actual yield will fluctuate somewhat.

I still claim that there are only few constraints. Our division is too complex to have more than a very few independent chains. Lou, don’t you realize that everything we mentioned so far is closely connected? The lack of sensible long-term strategy, the measurement issues, the lag in product design, the long lead times in production, the general attitude of passing the ball, of apathy, are all connected. We must put our finger on the core problem, on the root that causes them all. That is what actually is meant by identify the constraint. It’s not prioritizing the bad effects, it’s identifying what causes them all.