CF·Dictionary

Traditions 48 of 217 entries

Theory of Constraints

ToC

Eli Goldratt’s management theory: a system’s output is governed by its single binding constraint.

  1. № 009 Balanced Plant A factory designed so every workstation has equal capacity and full utilization, which underperforms its expected output because variance combined with dependencies starves and stalls the chain.
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  2. № 017 Breakpoint A point on an analog spectrum where a quantitative change becomes a qualitative one, splitting a continuum into discrete pass/fail categories.
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  3. № 019 Buffer Spare resources held in front of the constraint to absorb variance so output is not lost.
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  4. № 023 Chain and Weakest Link A chain's strength is fixed by its single weakest link, so improving any other link does nothing for the whole.
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  5. № 030 Conscious Bottleneck CF's claim that focused conscious thinking is sharply limited, on the order of a few quality hours per day, making it the binding constraint on the rate of learning.
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  6. № 032 Constraint The one part of a system that limits its throughput toward a goal, like the weakest link in a chain.
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  7. № 033 Constraint Applied to Epistemology CF's transfer of Goldratt's constraint concept into reasoning: spend detailed attention only on the few factors that actually bind an idea's success, and grade the rest pass/fail.
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  8. № 039 Critical Fallibilism Elliot Temple's rational philosophy that evaluates ideas in a binary, error-correction way and acts only on ideas with no known refutation, synthesizing Critical Rationalism, Theory of Constraints, and Objectivism.
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  9. № 043 Current Reality Tree A cause-and-effect diagram that traces a system's many undesirable effects back to a small number of root causes, so you can fix the underlying problem instead of fighting symptoms.
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  10. № 049 Degrees of Freedom Goldratt's complexity measure: the fewest points you must touch to affect the whole system, which often gauges complexity better than counting a system's elements.
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  11. № 052 Dependent Events Activities chained so that a later step cannot proceed until an earlier one delivers, making each step's output depend on the steps before it.
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  12. № 055 Drum-Buffer-Rope A Theory of Constraints scheduling method where the constraint sets the production tempo (drum), a buffer shields it from starvation, and a rope ties new-work release to that tempo to stop overproduction upstream.
  13. № 056 Elevate the Constraint Adding resources to raise the constraint's capacity, undertaken only after it is fully exploited and everything else is subordinated to it.
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  14. № 064 Error Correction Capacity Your finite, manageable capacity for finding and fixing errors, treated as the key resource that determines how much you can successfully take on.
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  15. № 066 Error Rate The weighted frequency of mistakes an activity generates, which must stay below your capacity to correct them.
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  16. № 069 Evaporating Cloud A Theory of Constraints diagramming technique that dissolves an apparent conflict win/win, without compromise, by exposing and refuting a mistaken assumption beneath one side of it.
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  17. № 072 Excess Capacity Capability a factor has beyond what the goal requires, present in every non-constraint of a stable working system.
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  18. № 075 Exploit the Constraint Wring the most useful output from the constraint as it currently is, before spending anything to add capacity to it.
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  19. № 082 Five 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.
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  20. № 083 Flow The smooth movement of work through a system toward its goal, the rate of which the constraint governs.
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  21. № 085 Focusing on the Constraint Directing optimization effort solely at the system's limiting factor, since improving anything else yields no gain toward the goal.
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  22. № 087 Future Reality Tree A cause-and-effect diagram that maps how a proposed change would produce the desired effects, while hunting for negative branches where it also causes new problems.
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  23. № 089 Good Enough A factor that clears its goal-relevant threshold with margin to spare, so improving it further yields no benefit — in ToC terms, good enough not to be a constraint.
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  24. № 103 Inertia and Constraint Moves The warning that once you raise the limit at one bottleneck, the constraint shifts elsewhere, so you must re-identify it rather than keep running on policies that no longer fit.
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  25. № 112 Inventory In Goldratt's three operational measures, all the money a system has tied up in things it intends to sell — raw materials, work-in-progress, and finished goods.
  26. № 120 Local vs Global Optimization A local optimization improves an isolated part; a global optimization advances the whole system's goal, and any improvement away from the constraint is merely local.
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  27. № 122 Margin of Error Slack built around a breakpoint or measurement so a pass/fail verdict stays reliable despite imprecision and variation.
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  28. № 123 Mastery The level of proficiency at which an activity is done reliably, with few errors and minimal conscious attention, using resources efficiently.
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    • Oism
  29. № 127 Mistaken Assumption The hidden false premise behind an apparent conflict, whose discovery dissolves the conflict and shows it was never a real tradeoff.
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  30. № 129 Multi-Factor Decision Making Choosing among options by combining many factors from different dimensions instead of optimizing a single criterion.
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  31. № 130 Multiplication of Binaries Combining many pass/fail factors by multiplying their 1s and 0s, so a single zero on any necessary factor fails the whole option.
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  32. № 131 No Inherent Conflicts of Interest The thesis that the rational interests of people do not inherently clash, so win/win solutions are generally available.
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  33. № 141 Operating Expense All the money a system spends to turn inventory into throughput.
  34. № 143 Overreach Attempting work whose error rate outpaces your ability to correct errors, so uncorrected mistakes pile into a growing backlog that trends toward failure.
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  35. № 158 Prerequisite Tree A Theory of Constraints diagram that maps the obstacles blocking a goal and the intermediate objectives needed to clear them, in dependency order.
  36. № 162 Pro/Con List A common decision technique that lists an option's positives and negatives and informally nets them into an overall verdict.
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  37. № 168 Quantitative vs Qualitative The distinction between differences of degree (more or less of the same thing) and differences of kind (different types, categories or dimensions).
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  38. № 177 Resource Budget The limited pool of conscious attention and effort available at once, which mastery effectively expands by offloading prerequisite skills to the subconscious.
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  39. № 181 Simplicity and Silver Bullets Highly connected systems are governed by very few causes, so a few simple high-leverage changes at the constraint beat many complex tweaks.
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  40. № 184 Small Steps Growing by tackling tasks only slightly beyond your current ability, so each step succeeds and your error rate stays manageable, rather than jumping into the deep end or staying in the shallow end.
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  41. № 186 Statistical Fluctuations and Variance The unavoidable variation in real processes, where a step averaging 30 units per hour does 20 in one hour and 50 in another, so nothing runs exactly to plan.
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  42. № 193 Subordinate to the Constraint Align every non-constraint part of a system to serve the constraint's maximum output instead of maximizing its own local efficiency.
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  43. № 200 The Goal The single overarching purpose a system exists to serve, against which every local change must be judged for its effect on global success.
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  44. № 201 Thinking Processes Goldratt's suite of logic-tree diagramming tools for answering what to change, what to change to, and how to cause the change.
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  45. № 203 Throughput The rate at which a system converts resources into success at its goal.
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  46. № 205 Transition Tree A Theory of Constraints diagram laying out the ordered sequence of actions and their expected effects needed to move from the current state to the desired state.
  47. № 208 Undesirable Effects The visible negative symptoms of a situation which, traced through cause and effect, lead back to a few shared core problems.
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  48. № 214 Win/Win Solution A resolution that fully satisfies every side of a conflict by exposing the mistaken assumption that made the sides look incompatible, rather than splitting the difference.
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