This continues our conversation with Dr. Lisa Lang on Theory of Constraints.

TF: If the idea is to strategically select your bottleneck (constraint), what are the characteristics you look for in a strategic constraint?

Dr. Lisa: A strategic constraint should be relatively hard to get more of, compared to a non-constraint. Hard to get more of, means that it’s expensive, hard to find, hard to train or something like that.

Non-constraints, on the other hand, are generally less expensive and easier to get. And a starting rule of thumb is to have 25% excess capacity at your non-constraints.

So we are leveraging our very expensive hard to get resource (constraint) and we have excess capacity at our easier to acquire (non-constraint) resources.
__
Dr. Lisa Lang has many resources on her website www.scienceofbusiness.com. She has made this offer to our readers. If you would like to receive her three hour audio and workbook (usually $199) for $99, please drop her an email at drlisa@scienceofbusiness.com.

We will continue our conversation tomorrow.