Essay About External Change And Theory Of Constraint

Theory of Constraint – Introduction
Theory of Constraint – Introduction
Today, more than ever, change is essential to satisfying expectations. Customers
expect higher product and service quality than the price theyre
willing to pay to acquire those products and services. More than ever,
employees expect security in their jobs. Shareholders expect that todays
investments will yield a higher rate of return over a shorter timeframe. Yet,
“to make ends meet,” management is constantly pressured to keep costs
under control.
In light of todays competitive pressures and a rapidly changing environment,
to not change is to give way to ones competitors. Hence, we should understand
that to improve means to change. We know that to improve means we
must:
• Provide products and services that solve customers problems
• Release products and services consistent with market demand
• Reduce variability in our processes
• Have measurements that indicate success relative to achieving our
• Reward people for their contribution to change
Rather than reacting to external change, or being subjected to random internal
change, many organizations have concluded that a process of on-going
improvement is an absolute necessity. For an organization to have a process
of on-going improvement, certain basic questions need to be answered faster
and more effectively. Those fundamental questions are:
• “What To Change?”
• “What To Change To?”
• “How To Cause The Change?”
Healthcare Analogy-
The Theory of Constraints (TOC) applies the cause-and-effect thinking
processes used in the hard sciences to understand and improve all systems,
but particularly, organizations. The process a clinician applies to treating a
patient is an excellent analogy for explaining how TOC recommends going
about solving a systems problem. If we were to describe the overall process