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Do you remember Little’s Law?
My interaction with supply chain professionals indicates that most of them don't remember the all important Little’s Law, which states that the more things you work on at any given time, the longer it is going to take for each of those things to finish. Higher WIP leads to higher lead time. Understanding Little’s Law holds the key to improve the flow in any system.
TOC has an important concept based on this law, called ‘WIP Control’. If the production system is a constraint, the purpose of WIP is to ensure that the constraint machine gets continuous supply of input materials. Releasing more orders into the system works negatively by increasing the lead time of all the orders.
If you want to improve flow and reduce inventory in the system, the key is to control fresh inputs at the rate of consumption by the constraint machine.