On page 60 of Deming and Goldratt, there is a discussion that a balanced system only produces the average level of production AFTER sufficient "work in progress" (inventory) is front of each unit so that the dependency upon the previous step is removed. The problem with this expensive "solution" in most health care systems is that the systems are almost always "reloading" on either a daily or weekly basis and the units are almost always dependent upon each other