Elevate the Constraint
also Add capacity at the constraint
Adding resources to raise the constraint's capacity, undertaken only after it is fully exploited and everything else is subordinated to it.
Elevate the constraint is the fourth of Goldratt’s five focusing steps: increasing the capacity of the system’s bottleneck by spending real resources on it — hiring, buying a machine, adding a shift. Because raising the bottleneck’s throughput raises the whole system’s throughput, this is where investment finally pays off globally rather than locally.
CF stresses the ordering. Elevation is step four for a reason: you first exploit the constraint (wring full use from existing capacity) and subordinate everything else to it. Those steps are usually cheap or free, whereas elevation costs money. So elevation is “not always needed” — much of the available gain often comes from the prior steps, and spending before exhausting them wastes resources on capacity you could have unlocked for nothing.
CF also flags a hazard: adding capacity can move the bottleneck elsewhere. There is always a weakest link; the question is where you want it. Elevating one resource until something else becomes the constraint turns step four into step five — check whether the constraint moved — and you must re-run the cycle rather than keep pouring resources into a spot that is no longer limiting.
This matters beyond factories. Applied to thinking and self-improvement, elevation means investing effort to expand a genuine bottleneck in your capabilities — but only after cheaper focusing has been done, keeping effort proportional to the global benefit it produces.