Let's say that this year, instead of wanting to improve performance, we want only to maintain the current level of performance, but we want to do it more efficiently. Let's say that we're happy, for the meantime, with a chain that can carry a load of one hundred pounds. But we are unhappy with, say, the maintenance costs that accompany our nine strong links. We want to transform our chain from the overweight, cumbersome beast that it is now to a lean, efficient collection of precisely tuned links that give us our desired level of performance for the least cost. Now we have a truly efficient chain.
Every link is capable of carrying exactly the same load, with no costly over-capacity.
We have virtually locked ourselves into the current level of performance. Now that we have a finely tuned, efficient chain, we have ten weak links. We have ten constraints. When, in the future, we will find it necessary to improve the performance of our chain, we will have no choice but to improve all ten links. We will have no choice but to undo all that our earlier cost-cutting efforts achieved.