For the sake of argument, let’s say you’re aware of an issue that’s holding your enterprise performance back, and you know what to do about it. At that point, there are seven key actions you can take to rapidly implement change, which in turn will allow you to respond to market changes with short lead times and less cash tied up in expenses or stock. You can read about the seven steps in chapter 5 of my book, Manufacturing Money, but for now let’s focus on step three: Tie the rope.

“Tying the rope”, as defined by Eliyahu Goldratt, essentially means that we don’t release raw materials, work orders, or other information to the beginning of the process at a faster rate than the process constraint can handle. This has some similarities to creating “pull” in lean processes. One of the chief sources of distraction that takes people away from the schedule is when they have many choices for what to produce next. By definition, there can only be one optimal schedule to best use the constraint.

Figure 1: A representation of a simple process

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