What are the Five Focusing Steps?

The five focusing steps comprise a strategy for a process of ongoing improvement. They are:

1. IDENTIFY  the constraint that is preventing the system from achieving more of the goal.

2. EXPLOIT the constraint to assure utilizing it fully.

3. SUBORDINATE  everything else to exploiting the constraint.

4. Only then, ELEVATE  the constraint.

5. After that, there is a new constraint. Do not let INERTIA keep you from doing it over again.