Page 90 - The Handbook for Quality Management a Complete Guide to Operational Excellence

76 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 77

system to produce the best system result. In other words, once the ducks
are in line, the task is to make them march in step together. We refer to
this as system optimization.
How important is it to optimize the system, rather than its component
parts? Deming himself answered that question in The New Economics for
Industry, Government, Education (Deming, 1993, pp. 53, 100). He observed:
Optimization is the process of orchestrating the efforts of all components toward
achievement of the stated aim. Optimization is management’s job. Everybody wins
with optimization. Anything less than optimization of the system will bring even-
tual loss to every component in the system. Any group should have as its aim opti-
mization of the larger system that the group operates in. The obligation of any
component is to contribute its best to the sys tem, not to maximize its own produc-
tion, profit, or sales, nor any other competitive measure. Some components may
operate at a loss themselves in order to optimize the whole system, including the
components that take a loss.
This is a powerful indictment of the way most companies have been
doing business since Frederick Taylor’s time, not excluding the “quality
enlighten ment” era of the 1980s and 1990s. In essence, Deming said that
maximizing local efficiencies everywhere in a system is not necessarily a
good thing to do.

Systems as Chains
To express the concept of system constraints more simply, Goldratt has
equated systems to chains (Goldratt, 1990, p. 53):

We are dealing here with “chains” of actions. What determines the performance of
a chain? The strength of the chain is determined by the strength of its weakest
link. How many weakest links exist in a chain? As long as statistical fluctuations
prevent the links from being totally iden tical, there is only one weakest link in
a chain.

Goldratt goes on to suggest that there are as many constraints in a
system as there are truly independent chains. Realistically, in most sys-
tems there aren’t very many truly independent chains. The dictionary
(Barnes and Noble, 1989) defines system as:
an assemblage or combination of things or parts forming a complex or unitary whole;
the structure or organization, society, business …
Thomas H. Athey defines a system as any set of components that
could be seen as working together for the overall objective of the whole
(Athey, 1982, p. 12). The underlying theme in these definitions is an inter-
relatedness or interdependency. By definition, then, a “system” can’t
have too many truly independent chains. So if there aren’t too many

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