The Goal: A Process of on – going Improvement (Summary)
Alex Rogo is the plant manager of Unico’s Bearington plant. Clearly he has problems in his plant as is evident in the surprise visit he got from the vice – president of his division, Bill Peach. Peach came to expedite an order (No. 41427), which he wanted to be shipped that day. Alex is given three months to turn around his unprofitable plant or else face a shut – down.
The order is shipped at the end of the day, although there was a breakdown of a machine and the plant operated beneath efficiency. All workers were pulled from other jobs just to work on a single order. Some even had to carry machine parts by hand to the point of assembly. Alex is concerned that his plant does not
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They were surprised that everything explained to them was done in terms of money. Throughput for instance was the money coming into the system, operational expense the money going out and inventory the money within the system. The production manager is surprised that everything can be measured in terms of money. The inventory manager compares inventory to investment. Finally they are all convinced by Alex’s explanation and decide to call Jonah for further help.
Alex meets Jonah briefly in New York the following day. Alex discusses the problems he is experiencing at the plant with Jonah, about how long he has to turn the plant around. Jonah says he doesn’t have the time to solve the problem but that with diligence, Alex and his team should be able to. He asks Alex to forget about the robots and came up with a better definition of efficiency than is presently used at the plant. Jonah told Alex that a plant in which everyone was working all the time was inefficient. Jonah also dispels Alex’s idea of a balanced plant being a good one. He said the trimming of capacity to demand is not good for a plant as it reduces throughput and inventory piles up. Jonah gives Alex something to think about - What happens when dependent events are in combination with statistical fluctuations?
Through a Boy Scout camping trip with his son’s group, Alex is able to figure out Jonah’s puzzle. The boys walk along the trail in a file with them alternating between
3. Assuming that processing starts at 7 am on a “busy” day, present the situation during such a day, by constructing an inventory build-up diagram for bins and trucks.
Gilcrist’s position is a walk-in president of the company due to Gunerson’s death intervened. Now Gilcrist must learn the business in a fast pace and keep it running without Gunerson’s advice. She can expect some skepticism from her employees because that’s what usually happens when change occurs. Her employees will watch her every move to grade if she’s capable of handling the task as president. Boswell challenges Gilcrist with a difficult task. She has no secretary and it was apparent that there are severe production problem persists in the yard, and an assortment of other tasks. It’s a tough time to start
The process is riddled with wait time and defects – two of the “Seven Deadly Sins.” Many of the orders languish in certain parts of the company and are filled out erroneously within a non-digitized system.
At this point the factory is operating at a capacity like never before. They have been shipping a record number of orders in a record amount of time. All of the orders past the shipping date have been completed and shipped. They are now shipping current orders on-time and early in in some cases. Now that the plat is responding better to market demands, Alex can focus on sales throughput, and gets the division sales manager, Johnny Jons, to market his plant's improved capacity. Together they manage to tie down a major contract
The scenario begins with Bill Peach, the VP of UniCo, giving Alex an ultimatum of showing improvements in production
Jonah asks Alex if the robots have increased the amount of products shipped per day. Secondly, he asks if the robots have reduced the plants people expense. Finally, Jonah asks if the robots have decreased the amount of inventory that the plant has.
The assembly line principle as it matured in industrial society however, proved to destroy workers creativity and stifle the very essence of human life. Growth and change. On an assembly line workers are degraded to automatons, performing the same tasks over and over and over. Day in day out, without ever having any knowledge or input into any of the other tasks related to completion of the project. This monotony in the workplace spills over into the daily life of many factory workers and affects how they live their life outside of the factory after the whistle blows as much as it does while they’re on the assembly line.
One of the valued but demanding customer, who had considered Engstrom as a certified supplier, was requesting a large order but Engstrom was unable to deliver on time due to the low productivity problem. The plant manager along with his assistant were already dealing with the troubling numbers when this happened. While the task was a tough bone and not easy to tackle, and there were a lot of factors needed to be taken in to consideration. The leadership started to analyze and break down the main causations other than the overall economic trend that dragged the company into the turmoil, as it turned out, it was the low, frustrated employee morale and diminished work satisfaction.
When Tim Morrissey saw the operating result for 1985 he walked into the office of his chief accountant Caroline Cooper and asked her how much confidence he should place in the split of operations between stoves and ovens. The loss on stoves was not really surprising to him given the tough market for that product, but he wan’t sure how Cooper had assigned costs and revenues.
Alex tells Jonah of the problems at the plant and the three months in which to fix them. Jonah says they can be fixed in that time and then they go over the problems the plant has. First, Jonah tells Alex to forget about the robots. He also tells Alex that "A plant in which everyone is working all the time is very inefficient." Jonah suggest that Alex question how he is managing the capacity in the plant and consider the concept of a balanced plant. According to Jonah, this "is a plant where the capacity of each and every resource is balanced exactly with demand from the market."
Due to this realization, the next thing he did was to talk to the plant’s accountants to determine how the company can make money. The company will have money if the net profit increased along with the return on
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.
Mr. James Elliott, CEO and Chairman of Byte Products, Inc., presents his recommendation to the Board of Directors to purchase an existing plant in Plainville as a temporary plant until the new one is online in 3 years. All on the Board except one (10–1) seem to favor the proposal. What ensues is the discussion between Elliott and Kevin Williams, board member, over the proposal to purchase a plant with the intention of closing it in 3 years.
To be able to understand the goal of your company you have to be able to understand the overall goal in relation to the measurements, meaning that the rate at which the system generates sales increases while at the same time decreasing the money that the company has used to purchase things and also decreasing the amount of money that is spent moving “inventory” into the throughput. The interesting part of these measurements is that they all have to do with the goal of the company, meaning that they all involve money, which is the overall goal of the company, to make money.
In the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s the plant struggled to meet budgetary goals and was faced with potential closure. These struggles stemmed from the plants inability to increase efficiency and reduce cost. Reducing labor