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194 Cha pte r T w e l v e

at process design and management that achieving minimum cycle times is second
nature to them, they take it for granted—we seldom fret about those things we take for
granted. Second, their approach gets them to a minimum cycle time anyway. They
break constraints by first removing the waste and then rebalancing the work.

Chapter Summary
Every process has a bottleneck, a constraint that limits its ability to produce. The con-
straint can be a specific step that has the longest cycle time, or if the steps have large
variations in cycle time, the constraint can be a moving one. Generally speaking, the
worst constraint is a policy constraint because they are often not recognized as things
that can limit the system. The beauty of breaking through system constraints can be
seen in the economics of constraint removal, because the incremental product produced,
once the constraint is broken, is much more profitable. Constraints are generally easy to
find since the inventory will accumulate in front of the constraint.