Ford F-150 air conditioner assembly constraint

Tom's central teaching case for the limits of *The Goal* / Theory of Constraints when applied dogmatically. The foreman's "constraint is the people" answer reframes the problem.

I have a story about Herbie and Ford. The Theory of Constraints. This is the air conditioner for the F-150 pickup. I had a student at LFM — LGO, whatever it is — who was assigned to a plant where they had about twenty lines, each line making one type of air conditioner for one Ford product. The F-150 is the largest-selling vehicle in the world. They were selling like hotcakes in the '90s, they still sell pretty well, and they were reaching their capacity constraint on the air conditioner assembly line for the F-150. It was going to cost twenty million dollars to build a new line, and then both would be working at about fifty-two percent of capacity, which wouldn't be very efficient. How could you get more throughput? Ford was a great believer in Theory of Constraints at the time — this is mid to late '90s.