Throughput is set by one binding constraint; improvement anywhere else is illusory.
Goldratt's 1984 argument. The counterintuitive consequence is that improving a non-bottleneck raises inventory and costs without raising throughput, so local efficiency measures actively mislead.
In practice
- A factory that buys a faster cutting machine finds the paint shop still sets the output, and now has more part-finished stock waiting for it.
- A team that speeds up the stage before the review queue produces a longer review queue, and the local efficiency metric improves.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Design & Systems
- Essay
- Why systems behave against intuition