Flow Over Efficiency in Systems

“Eliyahu Goldratt wrote in The Goal that efficiency and flow are not the same.

Efficiency measures how busy each part of a system looks, but flow measures how much value the

entire system produces. A system with perfect local efficiency can still have poor flow if the constraint

isn’t addressed. Goldratt’s point is that optimizing every part increases congestion,

inventory, and delays, while improving the constraint increases throughput immediately.

Flow, not local efficiency, determines real performance.”