What are five of the seven key principles of the Theory of Constraints?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The principles of TOC are:
The focus should be on balancing flow, not on balancing capacity.
Maximizing the output and efficiency of every resource may not maximize the throughput of the entire system.
An hour lost at a bottleneck or a constrained resource is an hour lost for the whole system. In contrast, an hour saved at a nonbottleneck resource is a mirage because it does not make the whole system more productive.
Inventory is needed only in front of the bottlenecks in order to prevent them from sitting idle, and in front of assembly and shipping points in order to protect customer schedules. Building inventories elsewhere should be avoided.
Work, which can be materials, information to be processed, documents, or customers, should be released into the system only as frequently as the bottlenecks need it. Bottleneck flows should be equal to the market demand. Pacing everything to the slowest resource minimizes inventory and operating expenses.
Activating a nonbottleneck resource (using it for improved efficiency that does not increase throughput) is not the same as utilizing a bottleneck resource (that does lead to increased throughput). Activation of nonbottleneck resources cannot increase throughput, nor promote better performance on financial measures outlined in Table 5.1.
Every capital investment must be viewed from the perspective of its global impact on overall throughput (T), inventory (I), and operating expense (OE).