--- slug: whats-new summary: "A running record of recent additions and revisions to the book, newest first, with per-checkpoint coverage metrics." --- # What's New Recent changes to The Theory of Constraints Atlas. ## 2026-10-20 ### What's New - **New page:** [About the Curator](about-curator.md) introduces Simon M. White, the TOC Atlas’s first curator. - **Improved:** The cover now carries the full official title and credits Simon M. White as curator, with the composition rebalanced to keep the typography clear of the chain artwork. - **Structural:** [tocatlas.com](https://tocatlas.com) is now the Atlas’s standalone home, and the book has moved from Bartley Labs to the published [Bartley Editions](https://bartleyeditions.com/books/) catalog. ### Metrics - Total articles: 115 ## 2026-07-15 ### What's New - **Improved:** [Simplified Drum-Buffer-Rope (S-DBR)](s-dbr.md) — tighter planning logic, clearer boundaries with full DBR, and a more direct explanation of its four operating decisions. - **Improved:** [Future Reality Tree (FRT)](future-reality-tree.md) — tighter causal-testing guidance, clearer construction steps, and a more direct explanation of negative branches and AND-junctors. - **Improved:** [Fever Chart](fever-chart.md) — clearer zone boundaries, a precise project-buffer-consumption-rate definition, and a source-grounded example of a project moving from red back to yellow. - **Improved:** [Strategy and Tactics Tree (S&T Tree)](strategy-tactics-tree.md) — a clearer what-for/how structure, tighter implementation guidance, and a more direct explanation of its mixed necessity and sufficiency logic. ### Metrics - Total articles: 115 - Coverage: 115 of 118 proposed concepts written (97%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 4 ## 2026-07-01 ### What's New - **Improved:** [Make-to-Stock vs. Make-to-Availability (MTS vs. MTA)](mts-mta.md) — tightened prose around the MTS/MTA boundary and the availability promise behind the TOC formulation. - **Improved:** [Prerequisite Tree (PRT)](prerequisite-tree.md) — clarified the implementation logic that turns obstacles into necessary intermediate objectives. - **Improved:** [Current Reality Tree (CRT)](current-reality-tree.md) — redrafted the diagnostic logic and sufficiency-diagram examples for a cleaner path from undesirable effects to a core problem. - **Improved:** [Holistic ToC Implementation](holistic-toc-implementation.md) — sharpened the whole-system implementation logic and removed loose phrasing from the entry. - **Improved:** [Buffer Management](buffer-management.md) — redrafted the execution-control logic, buffer-priority reading, and repeated-red cause-analysis guidance. - **Improved:** [Drum-Buffer-Rope (DBR)](drum-buffer-rope.md) — redrafted the constraint-protection logic, release control, and DBR/S-DBR boundary. ### Metrics - Total articles: 115 - Coverage: 115 of 117 proposed concepts written (98%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 6 ## 2026-06-25 ### What's New - **New article:** [The ProConCloud Method](proconcloud.md) — Alan Barnard's five-step process that combines the Pros-Cons list, the Change Matrix, and the Evaporating Cloud to resolve chronic decision conflicts without compromise. - **Improved:** [Categories of Legitimate Reservations](categories-legitimate-reservations.md) — rewritten with a sharper opening, a clearer explanation of the level order, and tighter descriptions of each reservation, with the canonical examples and sources preserved. - **Improved:** [Inherent Simplicity](inherent-simplicity.md) — tighter phrasing on what Goldratt's "simplicity" claim does and does not say. - **Improved:** [Sufficient Cause](sufficient-cause.md) — polished for tighter, clearer prose. - **Improved:** [Decisive Competitive Edge](decisive-competitive-edge.md) — polished for tighter, clearer prose. ### Metrics - Total articles: 115 - Coverage: 115 of 117 proposed concepts written (98%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 4 ## 2026-06-20 ### What's New - **New article:** [Throughput Economics](throughput-economics.md) — the two-scenario method that extends Throughput Accounting to bigger, riskier decisions, reporting a conservative-to-optimistic range of net-profit impact instead of a single number. - **New article:** [Management Attention Constraint](management-attention-constraint.md) — why an organization's rate of strategic improvement is so often limited by the senior team's finite capacity to focus, and how TOC exploits that scarce attention by starting fewer initiatives. - **Improved:** [Critical Chain](critical-chain.md) — rewritten so the lede lands its thesis immediately, with a new opening on how the term plays on "critical path," and the whole entry tighter and faster to read. - **Improved:** [Project Buffer](project-buffer.md) — a sharper entry on the single time reserve at the end of the critical chain: its sizing rule, its three-zone fever-chart reading, and how it differs from the feeding and resource buffers. - **Improved:** [Six Layers of Resistance](six-layers-resistance.md) — the Layer 0 to 9 sequence is now a scannable list and the prose is tighter throughout. - **Improved:** [Traditional Financial Measures and Their Dilemmas](financial-measure-dilemmas.md) — tighter wording in the opening and a cleaner name for the first recognition test. - **Improved:** [Oxfordshire Radcliffe Hospital A&E](oxfordshire-radcliffe-ae.md) — polished for prose quality, with new cross-links to Five Focusing Steps, Buffer Management, Subordination, Policy Constraint, and TOC in Services. ### Metrics - Total articles: 114 - Coverage: 114 of 117 proposed concepts written (97%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 5 ## 2026-06-18 ### What's New - **New article:** [Reliable Rapid Response (RRR)](reliable-rapid-response.md) — how a B2B manufacturer turns reliable due-date performance into a market offer, then prices urgent delivery without breaking the operating promise. - **New article:** [Management by Criticalities (MBC II)](management-criticalities.md) — how Trietsch's critique reframes one-constraint planning as economic balancing of resource criticalities under uncertainty. - **Improved:** [Efficiency Trap](efficiency-trap.md) — clearer activation/utilization framing and cleaner guidance on replacing local-efficiency controls with constraint-protecting measures. - **Improved:** [Padding Without Aggregating](padding-without-aggregating.md) — tighter language about why task-level safety gets consumed locally and how project and feeding buffers turn the same safety into system protection. - **Improved:** [Parkinson's Law in Projects](parkinsons-law.md) — clearer language about visible task safety, local polish, remaining-duration reporting, and the handoff signal. - **Improved:** [Resource Buffer](resource-buffer.md) — a sharper explanation of why resource buffers are alerts for critical-chain readiness, not time reserves, slack, or extra capacity. - **Improved:** [Student Syndrome](student-syndrome.md) — clearer language about padded local due dates, late starts, shared buffers, remaining-duration reporting, and buffer-status control. ### Metrics - Total articles: 112 - Coverage: 112 of 117 proposed concepts written (96%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 5 ## 2026-06-16 ### What's New - **New article:** [Assembly Buffer](assembly-buffer.md) — how full DBR protects assembly convergence when feeder paths have to meet constraint-processed work. - **New article:** [Marketing Core Conflict Cloud](marketing-conflict-cloud.md) — how TOC separates customer perceived value from supplier cost assumptions when setting price. - **New article:** [Pipeline Management and Pipeline Planning](pipeline-management-planning.md) — how multi-project CCPM controls project release against a drum or virtual drum. - **Improved:** [Feeding Buffer](feeding-buffer.md) — a sharper explanation of how feeder-path time protection guards critical-chain merge points without turning every path into the project constraint. ### Metrics - Total articles: 110 - Coverage: 110 of 117 proposed concepts written (94%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 1 ## 2026-06-15 ### What's New - **New article:** [Actively Synchronized Replenishment](actively-synchronized-replenishment.md) — how ASR keeps MRP visibility while replacing forecast-push priority with stock-buffer placement, available-stock planning, and visible execution signals. - **Improved:** [Throughput Accounting](throughput-accounting.md) — a sharper opening lands the idea immediately, with tighter definitions, tests, and citations. - **Improved:** [Product Mix Decision Under Constraints](product-mix-decision.md) — clearer limits around T/CU ranking and a cleaner worked-example close. - **Structural:** Fixed five Foundations Related Articles links into [Breaking the Wrong Constraint](breaking-wrong-constraint.md), so the core antipattern connections now appear. ### Metrics - Total articles: 107 - Coverage: 107 of 114 proposed concepts written (94%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 7 ## 2026-06-14 ### What's New - **New article:** [Technology Questions (Goldratt's Six Questions)](technology-questions.md) — the six-question sequence for judging whether a new technology actually creates value, by tracing it to the limitation it removes and the old rules that have to change first. - **Improved:** [Cost-World Thinking](cost-world-thinking.md) — the antipattern's opening now lands the core idea immediately, and the entry reads tighter throughout without losing any of its named examples or sources. ### Metrics - Total articles: 106 - Coverage: 106 of 112 proposed concepts written (95%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 1 ## 2026-06-10 ### What's New - **New article:** [Strategic Constraint](strategic-constraint.md) — where leadership deliberately chooses to hold the system's binding limit over the long run, and why the Five Focusing Steps are not an endless chase of whichever resource binds today. - **Improved:** [Bad Multitasking](bad-multitasking.md) — clearer cause-and-effect prose plus a direct link to the Fever Chart entry. - **Improved:** [Continuous Improvement Auditing](continuous-improvement-auditing.md) — clearer audit-classification language and a sharper sustainment warning about apparent gains that cut protective capacity. - **Improved:** [Cost-World vs. Throughput-World Thinking](cost-throughput-thinking.md) — a faster opening and tighter framing of the paradigm conflict, diagnostic signals, and certification relevance. - **New article:** [Distribute-to-Availability (DTA)](dta.md) — the named, end-to-end TOC distribution solution, from central-warehouse injection and daily replenishment through buffer-status priority to the inventory-turns sales offer. - **New article:** [Dynamic Buffer Management](dynamic-buffer-management.md) — how TOC resizes stock-buffer targets from repeated red and green behavior instead of freezing availability around the first estimate. - **New article:** [Transfer Batch vs. Process Batch](transfer-process-batch.md) — how TOC separates setup economics from flow so smaller transfers can cut lead time and WIP without wasting constraint capacity. - **New article:** [Throughput-Accounting Decision Cases](ta-decision-cases.md) — how TOC applies T-I-OE arithmetic to make-or-buy, outsourcing, capital, and price-floor decisions. - **New article:** [DDMRP and TOC](ddmrp.md) — how Demand Driven MRP carries TOC replenishment and ASR logic into MRP-dependent supply chains, and where its decoupling-point model differs from classic constraint focus. - **New article:** [The Four Concepts of Flow](four-concepts-flow.md) — the four production principles Goldratt drew from Ford and Ohno that explain why DBR exists and why Lean and TOC are the same theory in different mediums. - **New page:** [Learning Tracks](learning-tracks.md) — six study paths toward the TOCICO certification exams: a shared Common Trunk plus a colored path for each credential (TOC Fundamentals, Thinking Processes, CCPM, Supply Chain & Operations, and Finance & Measures). Each article now carries the colored ribbons of the tracks it belongs to, so a topic's place on a path and what to read next are visible from the article itself. ### Metrics - Total articles: 105 - Coverage: 105 of 111 proposed concepts written (95%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 3 ## 2026-06-07 ### What's New - **New article:** [Core Problem](core-problem.md) — how a Current Reality Tree selects the convergence point that accounts for the most significant undesirable effects. - **Improved:** [ToC for Software and DevOps](toc-software-devops.md) — now opens faster, frames Brent as a constraint candidate more precisely, and uses a cleaner flow example. - **Improved:** [VATI Plant-Type Analysis](vati-plant-analysis.md) — now opens with the practical recognition problem and clarifies the shorter VAT label against the richer VATI framing. ### Metrics - Total articles: 98 - Coverage: 98 of 104 proposed concepts written (94%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 2 ## 2026-06-07 ### What's New - **New article:** [Intermediate Objective (IO)](intermediate-objective.md) — the transitional condition that must exist before a higher objective can be reached, the entity an IO Map sequences and a Prerequisite Tree pairs with the obstacle blocking it. - **New article:** [Undesirable Effect (UDE)](undesirable-effect.md) — the disciplined statement of a negative current-reality symptom that a Current Reality Tree traces to a core problem and a Future Reality Tree converts into a Desirable Effect, with the wording rules that keep the diagnosis honest. - **New article:** [Injection](injection.md) — the proposed change a Future Reality Tree drops into a system's causal logic to turn Undesirable Effects into Desirable Effects, including the primary, trimming, breakthrough, and flying-pig variants. - **New article:** [Assumption](assumption.md) — the rationale under every Thinking Process arrow, the place where a cloud evaporates, and the construct behind the necessary, parallel, and sufficiency assumptions of the Strategy and Tactics Tree. - **Improved:** [Capacity-Constrained Resource (CCR)](ccr.md) — now opens with a cleaner distinction between the official system constraint and the tight resource the planner must watch before it becomes the next flow stop. ### Metrics - Total articles: 97 - Coverage: 97 of 101 proposed concepts written (96%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 1 ## 2026-06-02 ### What's New - **Improved:** [Operating Expense (TOC Definition)](operating-expense.md) — now opens with a clearer accounting-vs.-TOC distinction and shorter tests for recognizing labor inclusion, no allocation, and volume-invariant reporting. - **Improved:** [Policy Constraint](policy-constraint.md) — now opens with a sharper capacity-vs.-rule distinction and cleaner tests for rule-correlated idleness, suspension gains, cost-world recommendations, and recurring boundary conflict. - **Improved:** [Process of Ongoing Improvement (POOGI)](poogi.md) — now explains why ongoing means returning to the next constraint after the first win, with tighter tests for cycle motion, inertia, feedback loops, and sustainment. - **Improved:** [Subordination](subordination.md) — now makes the Step 3 failure mode clearer, with tighter tests for non-constraint idleness, release signals, measurement-set regression, and cross-domain subordination. - **Improved:** [System](system.md) — now opens with the practical boundary question a TOC analysis must answer before goal, constraint, and global measures have a stable subject. - **Improved:** [Throughput](throughput.md) — now opens with the practical distinction that a unit on the shelf has not generated throughput, then gives shorter tests for sales, labor allocation, and constraint-time ranking. - **Improved:** [Flow Metrics for Knowledge Work](flow-metrics.md) — now draws a sharper line between delivery throughput and TOC Throughput, while tightening the treatment of WIP limits, flow efficiency, and judgment. - **Improved:** [Throughput Economics for Software Organizations](throughput-economics-software.md) — now gives software readers a cleaner T-I-OE test for roadmap, pricing, platform, and capacity decisions. ### Metrics - Total articles: 93 - Coverage: 93 of 99 proposed concepts written (94%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 8 ## 2026-06-02 ### What's New - **New article:** [Protective Capacity](protective-capacity.md) — explains why TOC practitioners preserve deliberate non-constraint capacity instead of treating all idle time as waste. - **New article:** [Daily Management with TOC](daily-management-toc.md) — explains how managers use a compact Cloud, NBR, and IO Map sequence to turn daily operating problems into durable improvements. - **Improved:** [Inventory (TOC Definition)](inventory.md) — now opens with a sharper distinction between physical counts, balance-sheet inventory, and TOC Inventory, then gives shorter tests for spotting labor and overhead smuggled back into the measure. - **Improved:** [Local Optimization](local-optimization.md) — now opens with a concrete on-ramp and cleaner Foundations framing that distinguishes local scorecard gains from system throughput. ### Metrics - Total articles: 93 - Coverage: 93 of 93 proposed concepts written (100%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 2 ## 2026-06-02 ### What's New - **New article:** [Negative Branch Reservation](negative-branch-reservation.md) — explains how TOC practitioners test and trim the side effects of a proposed injection before implementation creates new undesirable effects. - **New article:** [Market Constraint](market-constraint.md) — explains when demand at the current offer, rather than internal capacity, limits throughput and shifts exploitation to market strategy. - **New article:** [Throughput Dollar-Days and Inventory Dollar-Days](tdd-idd-measures.md) — shows how TOC practitioners make late commitments and unnecessary early inventory visible without returning to allocated-cost reporting. - **New article:** [Full Kitting](full-kitting.md) — explains how TOC practitioners protect flow by holding project tasks, manufacturing orders, and service work out of execution until the inputs needed to finish are ready. - **New article:** [Goal Tree (IO Map)](goal-tree.md) — explains how TOC practitioners map the goal, critical success factors, and necessary conditions before current-reality analysis or implementation sequencing. ### Metrics - Total articles: 91 - Coverage: 91 of 92 proposed concepts written (99%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 0 ## 2026-06-02 ### What's New - **Improved:** [Constraint Type Identification](constraint-type-identification.md) — distinguishes physical, policy, paradigm, and market constraints with less catalog framing and cleaner diagnostic sentences. - **Improved:** [Breaking the Wrong Constraint](breaking-wrong-constraint.md) — sharpens the gate for testing candidate constraints before authorizing elevation spending. - **Improved:** [Constraint](constraint.md) — clarifies why a constraint is not simply a bottleneck and how physical, policy, paradigm, and market constraints change diagnosis. - **Improved:** [Five Focusing Steps](five-focusing-steps.md) — redrafted to land the loop faster, emphasize Step 3 and Step 5 failure modes, and preserve the canonical examples. - **Improved:** [Exploitation Without Elevation](exploitation-without-elevation.md) — clarifies why exploitation must precede elevation and how practitioners test whether exploitation is exhausted. - **Improved:** [Improving Non-Constraints](improving-non-constraints.md) — sharpens why local gains at non-constraints fail the system-rate test and how audit, measurement, and protective-capacity moves avoid the trap. - **Improved:** [The Goal](goal.md) — clarifies why TOC states the system goal before naming constraints, measuring throughput, or defending recommendations against cost-world reporting. ### Metrics - Total articles: 86 - Coverage: 86 of 92 proposed concepts written (93%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 7 ## 2026-06-02 ### What's New - **New article:** [Antipatterns Index](antipatterns-index.md) — a single grouped surface for the nine recurring TOC traps, with one-line recognition statements and links back to the inline entries. - **Improved:** [The Change Matrix](change-matrix.md) — clearer opening language and tighter explanation of how the matrix diagnoses value, transition cost, and future risk before choosing a buy-in path. - **Improved:** [S&T Trees in Organizations](st-trees-organizations.md) — clearer wording about validation depth, authority alignment, and how organizational deployment keeps local tactics tied to the higher strategy. - **Improved:** [ToC for Personal Dilemmas](personal-dilemmas.md) — a sharper opening and tighter explanation of how personal clouds, goal-relative productivity, and buffered task lists apply TOC logic at personal scale. - **Improved:** [TLS Integration (TOC + Lean + Six Sigma)](tls-integration.md) — tighter explanation of TOC-led sequencing: TOC chooses where Lean and Six Sigma work belongs, while Lean and Six Sigma remain focused tools. - **Improved:** [Antipatterns Index](antipatterns-index.md) — clearer diagnostic language for recognizing TOC traps and finding their corrective entries. ### Metrics - Total articles: 86 - Coverage: 86 of 86 proposed concepts written (100%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 5 ## 2026-06-02 ### What's New - **New article:** [The Change Matrix](change-matrix.md) — how Zultner's six-box CM2 diagnostic helps practitioners test whether a proposed change is worth choosing from the other party's current, transition, and future reality. - **New article:** [Boeing CCPM Implementation](boeing-ccpm.md) — clarifies what the public record supports about Boeing Integrated Defense Systems' Critical Chain adoption and where program-specific claims need source checking. - **New article:** [Justice in Time](justice-time.md) — applies TOC to court congestion by treating judicial attention as the constraint and changing trial-phase scheduling to protect case flow. - **New article:** [ToC for Prisons](toc-prisons.md) — how Cheng's Singapore pilot used simplified TOC Thinking Process tools for correctional release readiness. - **New article:** [ToC for Personal Dilemmas](personal-dilemmas.md) — shows how the Evaporating Cloud and related Thinking Processes can resolve recurring personal conflicts, clarify goals, and protect focus at individual scale. - **New article:** [Israeli Air Force F-4 Phantom Maintenance](iaf-f4-maintenance.md) — shows how the exploit, subordinate, and elevate sequence applies to aircraft maintenance while flagging the case's thin public source trail. - **New article:** [S&T Trees in Organizations](st-trees-organizations.md) — how Ferguson's organizational S&T deployment pattern cascades strategy, tactics, assumptions, validation, and authority across management levels. - **New article:** [Cash Constraint and Cash Buffer](cash-constraint-buffer.md) — explains how cash becomes the active system constraint, how to exploit it by cash velocity, and how a cash buffer prevents recurrence. - **New article:** [Procter & Gamble Distribution](pg-distribution.md) — frames the field-cited P&G consumer-goods distribution story around TOC replenishment, buffer aggregation, VMI boundaries, and the evidence limits around company-specific results. ### Metrics - Total articles: 85 - Coverage: 85 of 86 proposed concepts written (99%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 0 ## 2026-06-02 ### What's New - **New article:** [Agile CCPM](agile-ccpm.md) — how software teams can keep Critical Chain's project-commitment discipline while using relative size, velocity, and an explicit scope buffer where absolute task estimates are weak. - **New article:** [Magic Druids](magic-druids.md) — how Powell and Cronin's druid-loop tool captures recurring conflict causality and turns an expert Thinking Process move into a teachable route toward a Current Reality Tree or Evaporating Cloud. - **New article:** [Mabe Mexico Manufacturing](mabe-mexico.md) — how a large Mexican appliance manufacturer became a TOC scale reference for DBR, buffer visibility, and subordinated measurement. - **New article:** [Applying Flow to Sales](sales-flow.md) — how Herman and Goldratt adapt TOC flow principles to sales by limiting open opportunities, stopping funnel-load measures, and using delay and dropout signals to improve the sales process. - **New article:** [Multi-Tasking Cascade](multitasking-cascade.md) — how too many active projects force scarce resources to switch among tasks until every project slows, and why CCPM corrects the policy by limiting release through a drum or virtual drum. - **New article:** [Conditional Reality Tree](conditional-reality-tree.md) — how Youssef and Mabin's 2024 Thinking Process tool maps future undesirable effects under named conditions when inaction or external change would make the system worse. - **Improved:** [Fundamental Structure of ToC](fundamental-structure-toc.md) — cleaner dependency language, less casual phrasing, and sharper source-list punctuation while preserving the 2024 structural-reform framing. - **Improved:** [ToC in Complex Organizations](complex-organizations.md) — sharper language for how TDD, T/D, and IDD measures coordinate independently measured units, plus a more concrete GKN value-lane example. - **Improved:** [Magic Druids](magic-druids.md) — clearer figure-eight druid-loop structure, a cleaner distinction from clouds and CRTs, and a sharper explanation of how the diagram helps organizations transfer expert TP facilitation skill. ### Metrics - Total articles: 76 - Coverage: 76 of 86 proposed concepts written (88%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 3 ## 2026-05-23 ### What's New - **Improved:** [Constraint Buffer](constraint-buffer.md) and [Shipping Buffer](shipping-buffer.md) — added Context sections that locate each time buffer in DBR, S-DBR, and Buffer Management before the definitions begin. ### Metrics - Total articles: 70 - Coverage: 70 of 102 proposed concepts written (69%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 2 ## 2026-05-22 ### What's New - **New article:** [Throughput Economics for Software Organizations](throughput-economics-software.md) — how software teams evaluate roadmap, pricing, platform, and capacity decisions by their expected effect on throughput, investment, and operating expense under conservative and optimistic scenarios. - **New article:** [Fundamental Structure of ToC](fundamental-structure-toc.md) — how Schragenheim and Updegrove's 2024 reformulation organizes TOC by logical dependency through seven system qualities, three breakthrough insights, and the tools that follow from them. - **New article:** [Flow Metrics for Knowledge Work](flow-metrics.md) — how cycle time, work in process, delivery throughput, flow efficiency, aging work, and blocked time make intangible queues visible enough to identify and manage knowledge-work constraints without confusing delivery throughput with TOC Throughput. - **New article:** [ToC in Complex Organizations](complex-organizations.md) — how enterprise-scale TOC coordinates many interdependent units with common throughput-relative measures, shared buffer signals, and cross-boundary subordination so local scorecards do not overrule system performance. - **New article:** [Unique Features of Government](unique-features-government.md) — how TOC changes when the system produces public value rather than sales revenue, demand cannot usually be refused, and the binding constraint may be professional judgment, policy, authority, or budget only after other constraints have been exploited. - **New article:** [TLS Integration (TOC + Lean + Six Sigma)](tls-integration.md) — how TOC supplies the focusing rule that decides where Lean waste-removal and Six Sigma variation-reduction work should be applied so improvement capacity raises system throughput instead of local measures. - **New article:** [ToC for Education](toc-education.md) — how TOCfE translates the Cloud, Logic Branch, and Ambitious Target Tree into classroom, behavior, conflict-resolution, and school-improvement routines that let learners reason through needs, assumptions, causes, obstacles, and intermediate objectives. - **New article:** [ToC for Customer Support Services](toc-customer-support.md) — how technical-support organizations protect renewal revenue and scarce expert capacity by separating necessary service from avoidable demand, making remote diagnosis the gate before field dispatch, and measuring support by throughput protected rather than calls handled. ### Metrics - Total articles: 70 - Coverage: 70 of 109 proposed concepts written (64%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 0 ## 2026-05-22 ### What's New - **New article:** [System](system.md) — the Foundations concept that defines the unit every other TOC entry operates on, naming interdependence among components, the owner-and-goal-drawn boundary, and the small-number-of-binding-constraints claim that makes focused management tractable. Placed at the head of Foundations so later entries' use of "system" has a defined referent. - **New article:** [Necessary Cause (Necessity Logic)](necessary-cause.md) — the "in order to A, we must have B" logic of preconditions that the Evaporating Cloud, Prerequisite Tree, and the necessary-assumption layer of the Strategy and Tactics Tree are built on, with the four-test recognition recipe and the four common misunderstandings that produce Thinking Process diagrams that fail CLR audit. - **New article:** [Current Reality Tree (CRT)](current-reality-tree.md) — the cause-and-effect map that connects a system's undesirable effects to the small set of core problems responsible for most of them, with both standard construction approaches (snowflake and three-cloud) and the Categories of Legitimate Reservations audit protocol walked through. - **New article:** [Categories of Legitimate Reservations (CLR)](categories-legitimate-reservations.md) — the seven-category, three-level audit protocol that distinguishes Thinking Process work from graphically elaborate presentation of belief, with the operational verbalizations, candidate-repair moves, and the seven-versus-eight-count debate named. - **New article:** [Evaporating Cloud](evaporating-cloud.md) — the five-box necessity-logic diagram that turns an apparent conflict into testable assumptions and an injection rather than a compromise. - **New article:** [ToC for Software and DevOps](toc-software-devops.md) — how to read a software delivery pipeline as a constrained flow system, from the Phoenix Project's Brent constraint through DevOps feedback loops and Agile CCPM's software-specific buffer-management adaptation. - **New article:** [Replenishment Pull](replenishment-pull.md) — TOC distribution's consumption-driven replenishment pattern, showing how central stock-buffer aggregation, frequent replenishment, and buffer status can raise availability while lowering total inventory. - **New article:** [Buffer Aggregation in Distribution](buffer-aggregation.md) — the variance-pooling concept behind TOC replenishment, showing why an aggregated warehouse buffer can protect many downstream stock points with less total inventory when replenishment is frequent enough. - **New article:** [Capacity-Constrained Resource (CCR)](ccr.md) — the production-control concept that names a capacity-risk resource tight enough to threaten throughput if its load, sequence, or protective capacity is mismanaged. - **New article:** [Breaking the Wrong Constraint](breaking-wrong-constraint.md) — the antipattern of spending capacity on a busy-looking resource while the true system constraint remains unchanged, with a practical gate for refusing wrong elevation decisions before they consume capital. - **New article:** [Product Mix Decision Under Constraints](product-mix-decision.md) — the practical T/CU pattern for ranking products by throughput per unit of scarce constraint capacity, with the accounting boundary conditions that keep the ratio from becoming a standalone shortcut. - **New article:** [VATI Plant-Type Analysis](vati-plant-analysis.md) — the manufacturing-flow classification that tells practitioners where to look before applying DBR, S-DBR, Buffer Management, or CCR diagnosis. - **New article:** [Traditional Financial Measures and Their Dilemmas](financial-measure-dilemmas.md) — the measurement taxonomy behind cost-world decisions, showing how unit cost, gross margin, ROI, utilization, inventory value, due-date performance, budget variance, and purchase-price variance can each create local targets that conflict with system throughput. - **New article:** [Continuous Improvement Auditing](continuous-improvement-auditing.md) — the TOC pattern for proving whether a change improved the system, merely moved a local measure, or needs to be corrected before it consumes more management time. - **New article:** [Efficiency Trap](efficiency-trap.md) — the Performance Measures antipattern of driving every resource toward high local utilization while the system constraint, not local busyness, still sets throughput. - **New article:** [Make-to-Stock vs. Make-to-Availability](mts-mta.md) — the TOC distinction between producing stock against a forecast and committing to reliable availability for selected repeat items through stock buffers, replenishment pull, and buffer-status priority. - **New article:** [Feeding Buffer](feeding-buffer.md) — the CCPM time reserve that protects critical-chain merge points from feeder-path variation without padding every task or treating every path as critical. - **New article:** [Resource Buffer](resource-buffer.md) — the CCPM notification signal that prepares a critical-chain resource before the chain needs them, without adding time to the project plan. - **New article:** [Fever Chart](fever-chart.md) — the CCPM control chart that shows whether a project buffer is being consumed faster than the critical chain is being completed, and tells managers when to leave the project alone, prepare recovery, or intervene. - **New article:** [Student Syndrome](student-syndrome.md) — the CCPM late-start behavior that consumes task-level safety before work begins, and the reason Critical Chain moves protection out of individual estimates and into shared buffers. - **New article:** [Bad Multitasking](bad-multitasking.md) — the CCPM antipattern where scarce resources switch among active tasks without helping any project finish earlier, consuming focus, buffers, and critical-chain priority. - **New article:** [Parkinson's Law in Projects](parkinsons-law.md) — the CCPM antipattern in which visible task safety gives work room to expand, explaining why Critical Chain moves protection out of individual estimates and into shared buffers. - **New article:** [Padding Without Aggregating](padding-without-aggregating.md) — the CCPM antipattern where task-level safety is scattered across individual estimates instead of aggregated into shared buffers that protect the project. - **New article:** [Future Reality Tree](future-reality-tree.md) — the Thinking Process tool that tests whether a proposed injection will replace today's undesirable effects with desirable effects without creating worse side effects. - **New article:** [Sufficient Cause](sufficient-cause.md) — the Thinking Processes logic operator that explains when an if-then cause, alone or with named companion causes, is enough to produce an effect. - **New article:** [Prerequisite Tree](prerequisite-tree.md) — the Thinking Process tool that maps the intermediate objectives required to overcome the real obstacles blocking a tested injection or ambitious target. - **New article:** [Transition Tree](transition-tree.md) — the Thinking Process tool that turns implementation objectives into sequenced actions with the need, conditions, and rationale for each step visible. - **New article:** [Inherent Simplicity](inherent-simplicity.md) — the TOC principle that focused improvement is possible because connected systems are governed by one or a few causes or constraints at a time. - **New article:** [Strategy and Tactics Tree](strategy-tactics-tree.md) — the Thinking Process tool that turns strategic intent into executable tactical logic without losing the assumptions that make the strategy valid. - **New article:** [Six Layers of Resistance](six-layers-resistance.md) — the TOC buy-in framework that turns resistance into a sequenced diagnosis of unresolved agreement about the problem, solution, risks, obstacles, and commitment. - **New article:** [Holistic ToC Implementation](holistic-toc-implementation.md) — the organization-wide TOC rollout pattern that keeps local wins from being erased by old measures, local incentives, and unprepared neighboring functions. - **New article:** [Decisive Competitive Edge](decisive-competitive-edge.md) — the TOC strategy concept that turns operational improvement into a market advantage customers value and competitors cannot quickly copy. - **New article:** [Mafia Offer](mafia-offer.md) — the TOC market-constraint pattern that turns a real operational edge into an offer customers have a hard reason to accept and competitors cannot quickly copy. - **New article:** [Viable Vision](viable-vision.md) — the TOC strategy pattern that turns an ambitious growth target into a constraint-based plan for building, capitalizing on, and sustaining a decisive competitive edge. - **New article:** [Supply-Chain Collaboration](supply-chain-collaboration.md) — the TOC supply-chain pattern that lets partners coordinate replenishment, buffer status, and constraint priorities across company boundaries. - **New article:** [ToC in Services](toc-services.md) — the TOC services pattern that translates goods-world constraint logic into resource buffers, service-level flow, and throughput accounting for expert service work. - **Improved:** the seven Thinking-Process tool articles — [Current Reality Tree](current-reality-tree.md), [Future Reality Tree](future-reality-tree.md), [Evaporating Cloud](evaporating-cloud.md), [Prerequisite Tree](prerequisite-tree.md), [Transition Tree](transition-tree.md), [Strategy and Tactics Tree](strategy-tactics-tree.md), and [Conditional Reality Tree](conditional-reality-tree.md) — now each declare their reasoning mode (necessity, sufficiency, or mixed) up front and carry a default-mode plus override-mode pair of worked Mermaid diagrams that together model the diagram-junctor convention: bare arrows where the diagram family's default reading applies, an explicit AND or OR junctor where the modeler intends to override the default. The Current Reality Tree and Future Reality Tree primary diagrams gained AND-junctors at the nodes where joint sufficient cause was always intended, so a TOCICO-certified reader can read every TP diagram in the book without inferring which logical operator is in force. ### Metrics - Total articles: 62 - Coverage: 62 of 109 proposed concepts written (57%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 7 ## 2026-05-21 ### What's New - **Improved:** [Introduction](introduction.md) — replaced the scaffold with a substantive entrance page covering the book's thesis, scope and exclusions, the pattern-language method, and reader paths for practitioners and outsiders. - **New article:** [Constraint](constraint.md) — the vocabulary anchor of the body of knowledge, with the constraint-vs-bottleneck distinction and the four constraint types named operationally. - **New article:** [Throughput](throughput.md) — the TOC definition (rate at which the system generates money through sales, not production), why the labor-exclusion matters, three operational tests, and five common misunderstandings. - **New article:** [Inventory (TOC Definition)](inventory.md) — the second of TOC's three global system measures, why the labor-exclusion rule separates it from standard-cost inventory valuation, and how it interlocks with throughput and operating expense. - **New article:** [Operating Expense (TOC Definition)](operating-expense.md) — the third of the three global TOC measures, completing the T-I-OE triad and pinning down the no-allocation rule the rest of the framework depends on. - **New article:** [The Goal](goal.md) — the system's purpose, stated precisely enough that any improvement effort can be judged for or against it, including how the goal generalizes from for-profit firms to hospitals, courts, and other service systems via goal-unit substitution. - **New article:** [Five Focusing Steps](five-focusing-steps.md) — the operational core of the Theory of Constraints, with worked examples from UniCo, Oxfordshire Radcliffe A&E, and a software platform team running flow metrics. - **New article:** [Process of Ongoing Improvement (POOGI)](poogi.md) — the continuous-improvement discipline TOC promises, framed as a family of three processes (the Five Focusing Steps, the change-question sequence, and buffer management), with four operational tests for whether a system is actually running it. - **New article:** [Subordination](subordination.md) — the operational discipline of running every non-constraint at the rate the system constraint can consume, the step practitioners most often skip, and the move that converts exploitation into throughput. - **New article:** [Constraint Type Identification](constraint-type-identification.md) — the diagnostic discipline at Step 1 of the Five Focusing Steps that names whether the binding constraint is physical, policy, paradigm, or market, with a three-question test and three worked examples. - **New article:** [Local Optimization](local-optimization.md) — the antipattern of improving individual parts of a system in ways that do not improve, and often actively harm, the performance of the system as a whole; the failure mode the Five Focusing Steps are designed to prevent. - **New article:** [Policy Constraint](policy-constraint.md) — the type-specific vocabulary for a binding limit that is a rule, measurement, incentive, or authority structure rather than a physical resource, with the field's terminological dispute named honestly and five diagnostic signals readable from operating reports. - **New article:** [Improving Non-Constraints](improving-non-constraints.md) — the antipattern of committing improvement effort to a resource that is not the system constraint, with the five operational moves it takes, six consequences it produces, and five counter-moves the Five Focusing Steps install. - **New article:** [Exploitation Without Elevation](exploitation-without-elevation.md) — the rule that exploitation moves at the constraint must be exhausted before any capital, hire, or outsourcing is authorized, with worked cases from UniCo's NCX-10, Oxfordshire Radcliffe A&E, the IAF F-4 Phantom maintenance turnaround, and a software platform team. - **New article:** [Throughput Accounting](throughput-accounting.md) — the management-accounting frame that evaluates decisions by their effect on throughput, inventory, and operating expense, with the operational tests, the T/CU product-mix ranking, and the six misreadings the frame routinely meets at the CFO boundary. - **New article:** [Cost-World vs. Throughput-World Thinking](cost-throughput-thinking.md) — the named paradigm conflict that lets a TOC recommendation be defended against a cost-world report, and the four diagnostic signals that tell which paradigm an organization actually runs on. - **New article:** [Cost-World Thinking](cost-world-thinking.md) — the antipattern of judging operating decisions by per-unit cost in a system whose constraint a cost-world ranking cannot register, with five recognition signs and five correction moves. - **New article:** [Drum-Buffer-Rope (DBR)](drum-buffer-rope.md) — TOC's production planning and execution-control method for make-to-order operations with an internal capacity constraint, with worked examples from *The Goal* and from V-plant and A-plant production cases. - **New article:** [Simplified Drum-Buffer-Rope (S-DBR)](s-dbr.md) — the variant of DBR for make-to-order operations whose strategic constraint is market demand rather than an internal resource, with the planned-load mechanism, the single production buffer, and the decision criteria for choosing it over traditional DBR. - **New article:** [Constraint Buffer](constraint-buffer.md) — the time-based reserve positioned immediately upstream of the system constraint in a DBR plant, the structural feature that distinguishes DBR from every other production-scheduling method. - **New article:** [Buffer Management](buffer-management.md) — the execution-control discipline that turns the static time buffers of DBR, S-DBR, and CCPM into a live operational signal through three-zone reading, burn-rate-refined expediting, and red-event diagnosis. - **New article:** [Shipping Buffer](shipping-buffer.md) — the time-based reserve that protects customer due dates from variability downstream of the constraint, with the structural-collapse story for S-DBR where the shipping buffer becomes the sole production buffer. - **New article:** [Services Management (TOC)](services-management.md) — the foundational Ronen and Pass framework for applying TOC to a service organization, with the two preliminary steps (state the goal, define global measures) prepended to the Five Focusing Steps, the Cost-Utilization diagnostic, garbage-time elimination, strategic and tactical gating, and the offload elevation mechanism. - **New article:** [Critical Chain](critical-chain.md) — the project-environment specialization of the constraint concept, the longest sequence of dependent tasks and dependent resource assignments after resource leveling, distinguished crisply from the critical path it most resembles, with the six-step scheduling procedure and three runtime buffer-management measures. - **New article:** [Project Buffer](project-buffer.md) — the single aggregated time reserve placed at the end of the critical chain, sized from the safety stripped off the chain's tasks, read each reporting period through three buffer-management measures against a green/yellow/red fever chart. - **New article:** [Oxfordshire Radcliffe Hospital A&E](oxfordshire-radcliffe-ae.md) — the case of buffer-management work across John Radcliffe and Horton General that lifted four-hour-target compliance from a 50-to-60-percent baseline into the 90s within six months without added staff. - **New article:** [ToC for Healthcare](toc-healthcare.md) — the TOC discipline for healthcare delivery, with worked applications to a four-hour A&E target, a specialty surgical practice, and a community hospital's operating-room block schedule. ### Metrics - Total articles: 26 - Coverage: 26 of 83 proposed concepts written (31%) - Articles edited since last checkpoint: 0 --- - [Next: Article Map](article-map.md) - [Previous: Learning Tracks](learning-tracks.md)