The AI Assembly Line: Speed Without Flow
The CTO Advisor, Sunday, June 7th, 2026
AI speeds up coding but only optimizes a station that was never the real constraint.
Written by Keith Townsend, the article argues that AI creates the illusion of removing friction, when in fact AI-assisted code only accelerates one production station, turning requirements into code faster.
Applying Theory of Constraints, it warns that practitioners must find the actual constraint rather than optimizing a step that was never the bottleneck. Increasing velocity at a non-constraint station produces speed without flow, leaving overall delivery unchanged. The piece concludes that AI did not fail to deliver ROI on code; rather, organizations declined to change the surrounding factory that would have let that speed translate into value.