The vast majority of the elements of a system are non-constraints.
Ignoring a non-constraint impacts the constraint.
This results in the performance of the entire system going bad.
The maxim “More is better” is correct only for the constraints.
It is NOT correct for the non-constraints.
For the non-constraints, “more is better” is correct only up to a threshold.
Above this threshold, more is worse!
What is this threshold?
The threshold is not determined by examining the non-constraint in isolation.
The interdependencies with the constraints dictate the threshold.
For the non-constraints, local ‘best’ is NOT equal to the global optima;
More on the non-constraints does not translate to better performance of the system.
Do you know why people are not able to do what they should do ?
The number one reason is that people are too busy doing what should NOT be done.
Lets take an example:
In most of the hospitals in the world the bottleneck is the operation room.
In most hospitals when you look on the use of this bottleneck, it is less than 60%.
40% of the time the operating room, it is standing idle.
You find out why, and you find thousand policies, all have one thing in common – somebody else has to be utilized.
Building operating room is very expensive.
In one example we studied, the number one reason for not using the operating rooms was that the people who are bringing the patients from the other buildings of the hospitals have arranged their work to be efficient.
So they are batching the clients.
The operating room is standing idle!
Focus is defined as:
1. Don’t do what should NOT be done
(this will immediately release significant capacity to..)
2. Do what SHOULD be done.