What is needed is just the courage to face inconsistencies and to avoid running away from them just because “that’s the way it was always done”. - Eliyahu M. Goldratt

With the bottlenecks more productive now, our throughput has gone up and our backlog is declining. But making the bottlenecks more productive has put more demand on the other work centers. If the demand on another work center has gone above one hundred percent, then we’ve created a new bottleneck.

Alex, the goal is not to reduce operational expense by itself. The goal is not to improve one measurement in isolation. The goal is to reduce operational expense and reduce inventory while simultaneously increasing throughput,” says Jonah.

We need financial measurements for sure — but we don’t need them for their own sake. We need them for two different reasons. One is control; knowing to what extent a company is achieving its goal of making money. The other reason is probably even more important; measurements should induce the parts to do what’s good for the organization as a whole.