The Goal By Eli Goldratt

Otherwise, the plant will be closed. The problem starts off when his plant cannot ship quality products on time and with a competitive price. A few days later, Alex get an e- mail from his boss, Mr. Peach, the division vice president invited him for an important meeting in the headquarter with all plant managers and his employees. Mr. Peach began the meeting by talking about the bad performance in the first quarter. During the talk, Alex found a cigarette in the pocket of his jacket. The cigarette reminded Alex of the conversation between him and Jonah, a physics professor, at the airport coming back from a business trip. Professor Jonah believes that the problem of Alex is because he does not know the goal of his company.

Alex meets Jonah, his favorite professor in school, surprisingly at an airport, during his rather traumatic phase of professional and family life. Jonah opens his eyes to a new world of constraints and variability. He tells Alex that he is actually heading a plant not with inefficient people but with an inefficient system. Jonah gets to know all this by just asking a few simple questions about Alex’s professional life

It is stressed in the Goal that there is a massive difference between throughput and efficiency. The novel makes the case that having an efficient operation does not equate to profitability. What does equate to profitability is to increase the throughput of any given operations system. Jonah tells Alex, “Throughput, is the rate in which the system generates money through sales.” (Goldratt, E.M. (2014), The Goal, pg. 60). Jonah goes on to explain to Alex that inventory is all the money that was invested in purchasing things that the system intends to sell. (Id). Furthermore, operational expenses are those costs that are required to turn inventory into throughput. (Id, at pg. 61). The definitions of these three measurements are not standard definitions for an MBA student. It is an interesting perspective on how to view operations.

Throughout the entirety of the book, The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, author Eliyahu M. Goldratt focuses on demonstrating the importance of the Theory of Constraints and what corporations should do in order to increase profits. A major term used throughout the novel is “throughput,” which according to the text, is “the rate at which the system generates money through sales” (Goldratt 60). Once a bottleneck machine in a production process is identified, there are multiple ways to increase throughput without expanding the physical capacity of the machine.

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.

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.

Alex stumbles upon his old professor Jonah, who introduced him to the theory of constraint. Jonah states three essential tools of measurement for everything in the plant "Throughput is the rate at which the system generates money through sales."; "Inventory is all the money that the system has invested in purchasing things which it intends to sell"; and "Operational expense is all the money the system spends in order to turn inventory into throughput" (Goldratt & Cox, 1984, pp. 60-61). These new ideas create a puzzle for Alex: What is the goal of Unico manufacturing plant? He keeps wandering and drifting his thought about what the goal of his plant is. After food and beer, it strikes Alex that the ultimate goal is to make money (Goldratt & Cox, 1984, p. 41). In order to make more money for the plant there should be an increase in throughput and a decrease in inventory as well

into a fictional story line of a plant mangers and his life. And his life includes his work as

The Theory of Constraints indicates that excess capacity from ‘subordinate’ departments should be utilized to lessen the strain on the bottlenecked department. Until the constraint on production has been removed management should subordinate everything else to the constraint. The proposed action of outsourcing inspection from the coating and sharpening department will free-up more valuable direct labor hours in the area of constraint. A separate inspection station before the final stage of production should be added to the production process. An employee from the chemical bathing stage will be cross-trained to inspect products as needed for the brief periods of inspection required. Because the second process has been deemed subordinate to the area experiencing constraint its excess capacity can be utilized in a more valuable capacity. Each additional hour in the coating and sharpening process will result in a firm benefit of $1250, or the contribution margin per unit of constraint for the Model C210. The addition of an inspection

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.

The goal of a manufacturing organization is to make money. Jonah poses this as a question: "What is the goal?" and Rogo actually struggles with it for a day or two, but any manager or executive that can't answer that question without hesitation should be fired without hesitation.

The Goal a Process of Ongoing Improvements was Dr.Eliyahu M Goldratt first book. It is a fiction business management novel that primarily focuses on the theory of constraints. The author Goldratt is a critical acclaimed Israeli business manager, physicist professor, and author. He is thought of as the guru of business operation. Goldratt is the creator of optimized production technique and the theory of constraints. He also is the author of the following books: Production the TOC way, IT’S Not LUCK, Critical Chain, Necessary but not sufficient, ISNT It Obvious, The Choice, The Race, What is This Thing Called: theory of constraints, and The Haystack Syndrome.

The book The Goal, written by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, is about the manufacturing process and how it works together to achieve the goals of a firm. The Goal is about science and education. It is an attempt to show that we can postulate a very small number of assumptions and utilize them to explain a very large spectrum of industrial phenomena. The Goal is about new global principles of manufacturing and people thinking logically and consistently about their problems and therefore able to determine “cause and effect” relationships between their actions and the results. In the process some of the characters in the book, Alex Rogo - who is the plant manager, Jonah - a physicist and old friend of Alex, Stacey Patazenik – who manages inventory

I read the fictional book called, The goal: A process of ongoing improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff cox. Goldratt has an extensive history of writing novels about business problems and their solutions. His list of work includes; The race, The haystack syndrome, What is This Thing Called Theory of Constraints and How Should it be Implemented?, It’s not luck, critical chain, and necessary but not sufficient. With his most recent work being in 2009 called Isn’t it obvious focusing on retail. The authors purpose for writing this book would be to educate and show examples on how to think outside the box or solve solutions, possibly even save companies. In his own words, “This book is an attempt to show that we can postulate a very small number of assumptions and utilize them to explain a very large spectrum of industrial phenomena” (Goldratt, Intro to revised edition page 2). He states he wants to show that these methods aren’t fantasy and have been/are working in pants around the world, and says that, “Finally, and most importantly, I wanted to show that we can all be outstanding scientists. The secret of being a good scientist, I believe, lies not in our brain power. We have enough. We simply need to look at reality and think logically and precisely about what we see” (Goldratt, Introduction page 2). This story is about a failing or close to failing manufacturing plant in a place called Bearington. The novel begins with the main character Alex Rogo, a

b. Heterogeneous goals and priorities. Each function’s different goal and subunit orientation causes it toview problems differently. Subunits have become competitive as the attempts of one to achieve goalsthwart the attempts of another.c. Bureaucratic factors. Rondell’s structure has evolved historically and status inconsistencies havedeveloped among different groups and managers—between the heads of R&D and engineering. Althoughthe head of R&D, “Doc” Reeves, formally reports to Frank Forbus, the director of engineering,informally Reeves has more status and power. The manufacturing manager is concerned about his lack of a degree, which he believes lowers his status, so he deliberately causes problems for other managers toincrease his power and status.d. Incompatible performance criteria. Each function is evaluated according to its goals, so when slowengineering design raises manufacturing costs or results in lost customers or penalty clauses in customer contracts, functions come into conflict.e. Competition for scarce resources. Some functions, such as R&D, can command whatever resourcesthey want. Engineering services is running very lean, its engineers stretched thin, and no resources for aneffective preproduction unit. Given that profits have fallen, competition for resources might increase,which will worsen the