Page 88 - The Handbook for Quality Management a Complete Guide to Operational Excellence

74 I n t e g r a t e d P l a n n i n g S t r a t e g i c P l a n n i n g 75

The practice of constraint management tacitly recognizes that con-
straints limit what we can do in any circumstance, and it provides the
vehicle to understand why this happens and what can be done about the
constraints we face.
Constraint management is an outgrowth of the Theory of Constraints
(TOC), a set of principles and concepts introduced by Eliyahu M. Goldratt,
an Israeli physicist, in the 1980s in a book titled The Goal (Goldratt, 1986).
These principles and concepts are a blend of both existing and new ideas.
The new ideas build upon older ones to produce a robust, holistic approach
to understanding and managing complex systems. To extend the theoreti-
cal principles and concepts into application, Goldratt developed three
classes of tools, which will be described in more detail later. For now, the
important point to remember is that TOC, and constraint management as
a whole, con stitutes a systems management methodology.

The Systems Approach
What do we mean by systems management? Throughout the twentieth cen-
tury, management thought was largely activity oriented. In the early 1900s,
Frederick Taylor’s scientific management (Taylor, 1947) focused on divid-
ing and subdividing work into discrete tasks or activities that could be
closely monitored, measured, and “tweaked” to produce the most efficient
perfor mance from each activity. By the second half of the century, the focus
had enlarged somewhat to encompass managing processes composed of
several activities. At some level, these processes could become quite large
and com plex, such as a production process, a purchasing process, or a mar-
keting and sales process. One way of dealing with complexity is to com-
partmentalize it—to cut it up into “manageable bites.” Organizations
typically do that by creating func tional departments. Each department is
responsible for some function that constitutes a part of the whole system.
One could even say that these “parts” are actually individual processes.
This is an orderly way to come to grips with the issue of complexity.
Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the meteoric rise of the quality
movement reinforced the idea that success lay in continuous refinement of
processes. The ultimate objective became “Six Sigma,” a level of defect-free
per formance unheard of 20 years before. Unquestionably, both commercial
and noncommercial organizations needed this focus. Poor product quality
(which is usually a result of faulty process quality) can bring down an
organi zation faster than just about anything else. But many companies,
despite herculean efforts and the expenditure of significant amounts of
money, were disappointed to find that their payback wasn’t what they
expected it to be. The idea that “if you build a better mousetrap, the world
will beat a path to your door” worked exceptionally well for the compa-
nies whose overriding con straint had been product quality. Yet for other
companies, the strategy seemed to be somewhat underwhelming.

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