Talk:Theory of constraints

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One or more constraints

The Five Focusing Steps section insinuates that at any given time, a system may have more than one constraint. Worse, it indicates that this may be a normal occurence.

While floating constraints are a possibility, multiple constraints at the same time are not. The utility of ToC is in being able to simplify the process of improving the performance of extremely complex systems by narrowing management's focus to the factors that actually limit throughput. If it's acceptable to perceive more than one constraint at any given time, then it's acceptable to perceive dozens of constraints at any given time.

I propose updating the article to emphasize ToC's assumption that there can only be one constraint at any given time, updating the Five Focusing Steps to how they're presented in official ToC literature

The concept of floating constraints deserves its own section too. That's the only context I can think of where the existence of multiple constraints can logically come to mind.

I started doing this, and reverted my changes when I saw that Lisa J Scheinkopf presents the steps with the possibility of more than one constraint in Thinking for a Change. In the context of her book, this makes sense. When planning for the future (i.e. using the thinking processes), it's definitely possible to forecast multiple constraints and think about possible ways to deal with them. But these are projections of the system's single constraint at different times - presumably after other constraints have been broken.

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