The Goal - Book Review

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt is about a plant manager named Alex Rogo and his quest of knowledge to make his company profitable again. Alex does this while battling family issues at home with his wife. In the beginning, Alex has no idea where he is going to start or even understand why they are losing money. Everything that he reads according to the numbers of the company says that he is running a very efficient company.

The main character in “The Goal”, Alex Rogo, manages a production plant that is unprofitable and not efficient with its resources. Alex is given a short amount of time to turn the operations at the plant around and make it an efficient, successful production plant. Throughout the book, Alex Rogo speaks to Jonah a number of times and learns a great amount of information from him. The first significant time that Alex and Jonah spoke was during their chance meeting at an airport lounge. During this conversation, Alex learned a great deal about productivity and goal setting. Jonah explains to Alex that a company has one goal and that the manager must be open about the goal. Jonah then discusses the definition of productivity with Alex and tells him that the true definition is bringing a company closer to its goal that it has set. Among these concepts that Alex learned, he also learned more about his own management style and how it could be improved. Alex learned that he must question common concepts regarding managing and that he must think differently in order to be successful.

Alex comes up with the consensus that the “Goal” of his business and many others is to increase net profit while simultaneously increasing return on investment and their cash flow at the plant. This basically means to make money. These three measurements can be achieved by looking closer into his second set of measurements. Alex specifically must find a way to increase throughput while at the same time decreasing it inventory and operational expenses. All three of these measurements must be cautiously monitored since they all rely on each other to be obtained in balance. Factors that cause throughput, inventory, and operational expenses to become unbalanced are excess manpower and balance capacity of the demand of resources in the market.

The first way throughput can be increased is by making sure that the bottleneck’s time is not wasted. According to the text, this means that a bottleneck should never be sitting idle or working on defective parts. When a bottleneck is down for an hour, it is not only the cost of the bottleneck that is lost, but the cost of the entire system. This is because the bottleneck’s capacity is equal to the entire system’s capacity, and whatever a bottleneck produces in one hour is what the corporation produces in one hour. In addition, if a bottleneck works on defective parts or parts that are not needed, it is a waste of time that the bottleneck could be spending on good parts that are needed. Without good parts from a bottleneck, you can’t sell a product or generate throughput.

The Goal, a fictional novel written by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, introduces the reader to a plant manager of a production plant within the UniCo Manufacturing group, Alex Rogo, who is experiencing consistent problems in meeting targeted production levels. Faced with an ultimatum, ta turn his plant profitable in three months, Rogo seeks guidance from a distant acquaintance of his, Jonah, an old physics professor. This consultancy introduces concepts that will constitute cornerstones of Rogo’s strategy to turn the plant around. These concepts are also applied successfully by Rogo in the alternative story-line of his marital life.

The story begins with outlining the problems Alex Rogo is facing. His plant is incredibly

The Goal, by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt, is a fictional management-oriented novel that demonstrates Goldratt’s, “Theory of Constraints” via resolving the personal and professional problems of the story’s main character. The story is about a plant manager named Alex Rogo, as he is six months into his first plant manager position at a UniCo manufacturing plant. The plant is located in Barrington, Massachusetts, where Alex grew up. Throughout the book, Alex discovers several concepts, theories and definitions, with the help of his mysterious mentor, Jonah, by which he can evaluate the problems in his life and then implement the necessary changes in order to improve or diminish his professional and personal issues.

Dean Lindsay’s book BIG PHAT GOALS reveals the reasons for our actions. He identifies six core feelings that motivate our progress: Peace of Mind, Pleasure, Profit, Prestige, Pain Avoidance and Power. What we choose to do is fed by some combination of achieving these feelings.

Jonah tells them that they have hidden capacity because some of their thinking is incorrect. Some ways to increase capacity at the bottlenecks are not to have any down time within the bottlenecks, make sure they are only working on quality products so not to waste time, and relieve the workload by farming some work out to vendors. Jonah wants to know how much it cost when the bottlenecks (X and heat treat) machines are down. Lou says $32 per hour for the X machine and $21 per hour for heat treat. How much when the whole

This paper is a book report on the novel entitled The Goal written by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox. The 40-chapter book is actually a business book written in the form of a novel that makes it interesting to read unlike other business textbook. As a novel, the book is entertaining but at the same time, very informative for management or accounting students as well as for the real-life company managers and CEOs who wanted to apply different managerial practices. The paper summarizes the novel and makes analyses in relation to Operations Management.

The above cost system was efficient during the 1980s because it split up overhead over three cost pools, adding an additional pool, which has machine hours as its cost driver. This proved efficient because “[w]ith increased usage of automated machines, direct labor run time no longer reflected the amount of processing being performed on parts, particularly when one operator was responsible for several machines.” Packet, pg. 7.

The book has two parts. In the first 264 pages, a manufacturing plant manager turns his failing plant into a tremendous success. That part of the book ends with the manager's promotion to a position with oversight over several failing plants. In the second part of the book (73 pages), the manager prepares for his new job by trying to deduce a repeatable "process of ongoing improvement." He's trying to make sense of what happened in the first part of the book so he'll have half a chance of repeating that success on a greater scale.

Given three months to turn the plant around, the plant manager turns to an assembling master who has a novel and possibly dangerous methodology to tending to the issues. In the first place, he takes what can be an entangled subject, profit, and characterizes it basically as the demonstration of bringing an organization closer to its objective. Each activity that brings an organization closer to its destination is beneficial. Any activity that does not bring an organization closer to its goal is not profitable. This demands inquiry on the objective.

The synopsis of “The Goal” per Goldratt, E. & Cox, J. (2014). is about the principle of manufacturing and a process of ongoing improvement. This novel was about understanding manufacturing, how and why it works and how understanding manufacturing, and applying the correct principles can bring order to chaos. This novel highlighted a plant Manager, Alex Rojo and his determination to save his Bearington Manufacturing Plant, which was facing some challenges in meeting customer needs and improving productivity and performance. With added frustration, Mr. Peach the plant president gave Alex three months to show improvements otherwise the plant will be shut down.

The goal is a very interesting story. It is more about a plant manager who faces personal and professional challenges. Alex earns a master’s degree in both Engineering and Business Administration. He works as Engineering Manager at UNICO Company, which produces a variety of finished goods for another plant and used as component item. His logical philosophy, family issues, and top management pressure makes him a creative and successful manager in the world of business.