202402251202 Limiting factors can change

The 202402251159 Limiting factor of a system can change over time. Take the example where adding potassium won't help crops if they don't have enough nitrogen. Now imagine that we add sufficient nitrogen to the soil, it's possible that the limiting factor might be the potassium or something else entirely like water or sunlight.

This can cause a "whack-a-mole" style expansion problem for optimizing a system. It's even possible that the shifts in the limiting factors could be at cross purpose with each other so that the result of helping one hurts the other.

In a business, it's important to remember this concept. Adding more salespeople to sell a product that you can't build fast enough won't help.

In engineering, it's an interesting analogy for quality, speed, and productivity over the long run. The limiting factor may not be quality now, but it could be in the future. Whether it's acceptable to trade that depends on many factors including the probability of making it to that future without failing.