Page 93 - The Handbook for Quality Management a Complete Guide to Operational Excellence

80 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 81

3. Very few variables—maybe only one—limit the performance of a
system at any one time. This is equivalent to the “weakest link”
concept discussed earlier.
4. All systems are subject to logical cause and effect. There are natural
and logical consequences to any action, decision, or event. For
those events that have already occurred, these consequences can
be visually mapped to aid in situation or problem analysis. For
those decisions that have yet to occur, or which are contemplated,
the outcomes of these actions, decisions, or events can be logi cally
projected into the future and visually mapped as well.

All of the description and prescription contained in constraint man-
agement are predicated on these assumptions.

Goal and Necessary Conditions
The first assumption above holds that every system has a goal and a set
of necessary conditions that must be satisfied to achieve that goal
(Schragenheim and Dettmer, 2000, Chap. 2). The philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche once observed that by losing your goal, you have lost your way.
Or another way of putting it: if you don’t know what the destination is, then
any path will do.
While this assumption is undoubtedly valid in most cases, there are
obvi ously some organizations that have not expended the time or effort to
clearly and unequivocally define what their goal is. And even if they have
defined a goal, most have not gone the extra step to define the minimum
necessary con ditions, or critical success factors, for achieving that goal.
For example, most for-profit companies have something financial as
their goal. Goldratt contends that the goal of for-profit companies is to
“make more money, now and in the future” (Goldratt, 1990, p. 12). Another
way of say ing this is profitability. This, of course, would not be an appro-
priate goal for a government agency, such as the Department of Defense
or Department of Education. Nonfinancial goals would have to be devel-
oped for such agencies. But it works quite well for most companies
engaged in commercial business.
However, having profitability as a goal isn’t enough. For any organi-
zation to be profitable, and for those profits to consistently increase, there
is a dis crete set of necessary conditions it must satisfy. Some of these will
be unique to the industry that the company is in, others will be generic to
all for-profit companies. But one thing that all organizations will have in
common: there will be very few of these necessary conditions, maybe
fewer than five.
Necessary conditions are critical success factors. They are actually
required to achieve the goal. For instance, customer satisfaction is unques-
tionably essential to continued progress toward a financial goal. Employee

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