Businesses manage themselves amidst pressure from multiple fronts – there are shareholders, partners, clients and employees, all wishing for prosperity, growth and better prospects. The company must show higher revenue, better productivity, however, keeping the costs under check. The inconsistent economic situations that dominate business environment in general only make things worse for the organizations. It is when organizations turn to Theory of Constraints (ToC) to counter difficult times with persistence and tact.

In the face of unfavorable economic conditions, it is general tendency among organizations to slow down and wait for the bad weather to wither away; the organizations slacken their pace and even implement layoffs. Nevertheless, it is widely accepted as a self-injurious practice. This is because any retrenchments rob the organization off its competitiveness force in the market. Implementation of Theory of Constraints, on the other hand, has proven to be an effective method to help an organization sustain and grow in the face of tough economic conditions.

The basis of Theory of constraints is to concentrate on the base growth of the organization during down time and hence improve its productivity and revenue. So the organization does not try to grow in business volume, but increases profitability by strengthening itself. It involves reducing inventory, late deliveries, over time and Work-In-Progress (WIP). It discourages workforce reduction. Rather, it encourages improvement in profits by using performance improvement strategies, like implementing newer technologies to overcome organizational constraints, one by one.

The Theory of Constraints was introduced by Eliyahu Goldratt in his book on business management to enhance profits. It advocated adoption of certain holistic insights and processes to improve sales (throughput), quality and reliability at the hands of existing personnel. The goal is to get set the organization on the path of success. However, it says, do not crouch, sit back and watch, but focus on the constraining leverages points – some physical and some logical – but all specific to the organization in question.

The Theory of Constraints has been showing remarkable results since 1985 in terms of bottom line growth in organizations. In fact, the response has been so cheering that not only organizations in troubled waters are using it, but also successful organizations are implementing the theory.

Rather than getting intimidated by erratic business environment around, go for  Theory of Constraints and achieve performance improvement continuously.  Theory of Constraints would help your business be more robust during difficult times that it does not feel all that difficult.

If you are impressed with Eliyahu Goldratt ‘s Theory of Constraints (ToC) and wish that it should be implemented within your own organization too – you need a good strategy up your sleeves. The first step would be to identify where to start.

Professionals have specified some steps to gain successful implementation of the Theory of Constraints. It starts with building consensus to securing commitment for the project. The entire focus would be on taking the top level management in an organization in confidence and winning their willingness.

Why senior management you may ask; these are the few people in the organization who can command. They have power of authority and access to all the resources with the organization. The implementation of Theory of Constraints implies requirement of resources and favorable commands in the future.

So, by getting a consensus from the senior managers in your organization, you benefit in many ways. To list down the advantages:

• You get the direction to go ahead with execution of Theory of Constraints because top level management is the source where all the commands and orders flow from.

• The project management is sustainable because the senior management can only make sure that it never experiences shortage of resources.

• The top management dictates whether the organization is going to take up the risk of starting with the change that the realization of Theory of Constraints would bring about. It’s a big decision and only high-level management can make it possible.

• Senior management puts down the standard of measurement of performance for the employees in the organization. The top management therefore facilitates smooth and effective acceptance of the new changes – both insights and processes.

Now that it is clear that the way to implementation of ToC goes through convincing top management, you can do it by tactful introduction of the topic. You can start with distributing informative books, journals and articles on the subject among decision-making authorities. You can arrange success stories of companies who implemented ToC and traded in similar business lines for them to read.