Theory of Constraints Training
You’ve heard of the terrific successes achieved with the Theory of Constraints. You may be wondering what an implementation looks like.
All theory of constraints implementations follow this pattern: procedure development, theory of constraints training, implementation, procedure and policy refinement, re-education and re-implementation.
What can you expect in your implementation?
It’s difficult to give a specific answer to that question, since every organization is different. In general, the implementation goes like this:
- Theory of Constraints Training
- Enthusiastic changing of some policies
- Huge Improvement in the bottom line
- Less enthusiastic changing of more policies and procedures
- More improvement
- The constraint moves to another area
- Results level off
- Management looks elsewhere to improve
The first stage of the implementation will be like housecleaning, with many constraints that you identify and then quickly break. Each time you break one, results improve. This period lasts about 90 days. Eventually, you’ll find a constraint that will be difficult to break.
Then comes the hard work. Implementing the system to exploit and subordinate will take longer than the quick results you’ve been getting up until now. If you don’t prepare for it, the implementation can get bogged down here. This phase may take 30 days; it might take 6 months.
A typical implementation of the theory of constraints gets positive bottom line results. If you’re committed to managing the constraints and not letting them manage you, you’ll continue to see positive results on your bottom line.
