I'm interested in what you find out. Though a bit new to ToC & I'll add my 2 cents :)
I see it as follows: the step/leap of considering the organisatioin from the perspective of left-to-right pipe/processes and a chain comes from Goldratt, who, through the dialogue of Alex Rogo and Lou tells us:
If any organization was built for a purpose and any organization is composed of more than one person, then we must conclude that the purpose of the organization requires the synchronized efforts of more than one person." . . . If we need synchronized efforts,” I continue, “Then the contribution of any single person to the organization’s purpose is strongly dependent upon the performance of others.” . . . “If synchronized efforts are required and the contribution of one link is strongly dependent on the performance of the other links, we cannot ignore the fact that organizations are not just a pile of different links, they should be regarded as chains.” . . . The important thing is you’ve just proven that any o