Focused Operations Management

Chapter 9. The Efficiencies Syndrome

In previous chapters, we've seen that bottlenecks, critical resources of the organization, must be exploited and that other resources must be subordinated to the constraint.

Experience has taught us that the management of noncritical resources of an organization is usually associated with a painful policy failure (a policy constraint) known as the efficiencies syndrome (see Goldratt and Cox, ). This situation is common among managers and workers in all types of organizations (service, industry, health, development, and not‐for‐profit organizations).

Efficiencies syndrome: A situation where there is a desire to operate noncritical resources more than is needed, while emphasizing the utilization of inputs rather than focusing on outputs.

The efficiencies syndrome is illustrated by the 1–2–3 process in Figure 9-1 . Under current conditions, the output of this 1–2–3 process is 50 units per day, and the (capacity) utilization of the resources of the three departments is 50 percent, 100 percent, and 67 percent, respectively.

What happens if we measure the system by average resource utilization? The average utilization is 72 percent. To increase the average utilization, workers in department 1 are trying to reach 100 percent maximum resource utilization. As a result, average utilization increases to 90 percent. The workers in department 3 are also trying to increase utilization to 100 percent, but they are limited by what department 2 (the bottleneck) supplies ...