In 2017, the CEO of the company that I work for gave me a book published in 1984, a year after I was born. This book sparked what I call “the awakening of the manager” because it was transformative, allowing me to see both work and personal activities in a completely new way. The book, The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, is a fascinating novel that introduces the Theory of Constraints. Now, let’s see how this production theory can help us in real and challenging situations.
Next, I’m going to share a personal experience from my first food and orchid distribution event in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This event took place in a school parking lot from 1:30 p.m to 5:30 p.m. The goal seemed simple: distribute a bag of canned food, a box of vegetables, and two orchids to 500 families. Sounds easy, right? Well, that’s what we all thought, but it wasn’t.
During the first hour of distribution, everything ran like clockwork—on time and without delays. Cars moved steadily, volunteers encouraged each other, and drivers looked relaxed, waving as they passed by. But that calm didn’t last long.
Around 2:30 p.m, cars started arriving in large numbers, turning what had been a smooth flow of vehicles into a traffic jam. By 3:00 p.m, the line of cars stretched beyond the parking lot and onto the street, creating traffic problems. Volunteers were doing their best, but it wasn’t enough, the line of cars wasn’t moving and kept growing.
The loud honking of frustrated drivers in front of the school made it clear that the situation was getting out of control. The problem? Many of the cars weren’t there for the food distribution, and the street in front of the school had only a single lane in each direction—one northbound and one southbound. So when one lane got blocked, there was no way for cars to pass—and that’s exactly what happened.
The tension among volunteers was noticeable. It was easy to see in their rushed movements and hear it in their nervous voices. The optimistic energy from earlier had disappeared, replaced by a sense of urgency and pressure.
Since no one was officially in charge of organizing activities at each station, and each station operated independently, I thought, “Someone has to take the lead and bring order to this.” So, I stepped forward and I declared myself as the event coordinator.
Without hesitation, I decided it was time to apply the Theory of Constraints. Although, I already knew that the canned food station was the bottleneck since it was the slowest, I started by measuring the execution time of deliveries at each of the three stations. I needed to determine exactly how many more minutes the canned food station took compared to the other two stations. With this data, I could balance the distribution line, so that each station had a similar delivery time, thus achieving a predictable flow.
I found that the canned food station took three times longer per delivery than the vegetable and orchid stations, which had similar processing times. The reason? Unlike the other two stations, where items were pre-packaged and ready to go, volunteers at the canned food station were bagging items on the spot, slowing everything down.
To exploit the bottleneck, I reassigned volunteers from the vegetable station, which had excess manpower, to the canned food station. This simple but effective adjustment increased the number of deliveries per minute at the slowest station. As a result, the canned food station’s delivery time matched the others, balancing the entire distribution process.
With the bottleneck resolved, I calculated a production measurement known as Takt Time. To do this, I analyzed whether the speed of the production line aligned with the remaining number of deliveries and the available time to complete them. I discovered that we did not have enough time to make the deliveries on schedule. The situation was complicated; the number of cars passing through the distribution line each minute needed to double.
Although more volunteers were available, all three stations were already operating at full capacity. Adding more people wouldn’t help—in fact, it could make things worse. Contrary to common belief, increasing workforce size doesn’t always improve efficiency. There is a breaking point where adding more people to a job no longer increases productivity, instead, efficiency starts to decline, and disorder begins to rise. This is called process saturation, which happens when a process reaches its limit. Instead of speeding things up, adding more resources causes congestion and makes everything slower.
Once I realized that we needed to increase the speed of the distribution stations without adding more people at each one, I decided it was time to implement a strategy called parallel processing. While it may sound fancy, it simply means performing tasks simultaneously instead of sequentially.
The first thing we did was streamline the handoff process. If a car had multiple occupants, the driver received the orchids while the passengers collected the canned food and vegetables. If the driver was alone, we asked them to unlock their doors so we could place the items inside. Unfortunately, even with these changes, we were not going to finish on time. We needed to take further action—and we did.
At the parking lot entrance, we instructed people to open their trunks so that volunteers from all three stations could load the items at once. However, not everyone was willing to open their trunks, which slowed down the process. An hour and a half before the event ended, I restructured the distribution area by shifting from a single car line to two parallel lines, instantly doubling the number of families served at the same time. This change solved the problem, and everyone began to relax.
When we had food and orchids left for only 80 families, I used another Theory of Constraints technique: the rope, from the drum-buffer-rope method. A volunteer stood at the parking lot entrance to control the flow, allowing in only as many cars as we could serve with the remaining supplies. Time flew by, and before I knew it, the last car had driven away—we were done.
At the end of the event, I felt a deep sense of pride. The volunteers, who had been overwhelmed earlier, were now relieved and happy. Looking back, the day had been an emotional rollercoaster—we went from optimism to tension and from frustration to triumph. Thanks to the Theory of Constraints, we not only distributed all the food and orchids to families in need, but we also kept traffic flowing smoothly in front of the school.
That day, I had a realization: being an operations manager is not just about completing tasks on time and efficiently. More importantly, it is about helping people. This role is a helping profession, similar to that of a nurse, firefighter, or psychologist. It involves turning chaos into order, reducing unnecessary stress for the team, and fostering the growth of individuals' skills. I believe managers have the power to enhance the quality of work life for employees, and that is just as rewarding as getting the job done right.
By Miguel Gonzalez
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