Five Focusing Steps
also Process of Ongoing Improvement · POOGI · 5 Focusing Steps
Goldratt's repeatable cycle for managing a system's constraint: identify it, exploit it, subordinate everything else to it, elevate it, then start over when the constraint moves.
The five focusing steps are Goldratt’s procedure for improving any system by concentrating effort where it actually limits results. The premise: a system has one constraint (its weakest link), and improving anything else is wasted because output is still capped by that link. The steps cycle: (1) identify the constraint; (2) exploit it — wring maximum output from it without buying new capacity, e.g. never letting a bottleneck machine sit idle; (3) subordinate everything else to it, so non-constraints serve the constraint rather than over-producing or starving it; (4) elevate it by adding real capacity, only after the cheaper first steps are exhausted; (5) check whether the constraint has moved, and if so, return to step one rather than coasting on old policies — what Goldratt calls inertia. Repeating the loop is the “process of ongoing improvement” (POOGI).
The whole sequence is a defense against local optimization: speeding up a non-bottleneck step looks like progress narrowly but does nothing for global throughput.
CF treats this not just as factory management but as a general thinking discipline. CF imports the same constraint logic into decision-making and learning: rather than diffusely improving everything, find the one factor that actually blocks success and focus there. The fifth step matters most for CF — error-correction requires re-checking what the binding limit now is instead of mechanically applying yesterday’s fix.