The Goal Essay

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

If there is too little production of inventory then you will have unhappy customers. And if there is too much inventory produced then you will have an excessive amount of inventory in storage. These factors happen when the projection for a project is wrong and the data used is incorrect.

Increased fixed cost: the factory was operating at 50 percent of capacity, and none of the individual product lines was pushing its capacity limits

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Dr. Eli Goldratt and Jeff Cox is a fictitious novel based on very real business practices. Goldratt and Cox’s writing focuses on a non-traditional approach to introducing Goldratt’s own Theory of Constraints. The plot centers around Alex Rogo and his journey to find solutions to save both his manufacturing plant and marriage.

In the book, The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, Alex, the manager of a manufacturing plant

The first major event is when Jonah and Alex met up in the airport and came to the realization of what Alex is doing is not the way he should go about running his business operations. Alex’s goal was all about making money. It was not about productivity. When Alex was explaining what his goals were, his answers were all related to the numbers. Increasing net profit, having a high return on his investments and getting positive cash flows to help sustain the plant. Although those are imperative to have and learn from a financial perspective, Alex did not understand that and from his position, an operations management perspective, it should be about productivity. From those statistics, in production means, they will improve in the plant through increasing the throughput, and decreasing the inventory and operational expenses. Jonah states, “There are three of them. Their names are throughput, inventory and operational expense.(Goldratt, pg. 60)” Jonah defines thoughput as the rate at which the system generates money through sales”. Then he defines inventory as “the money that the system has invested in purchasing things which it intends

Learning Goal 4 seemed to be the one goal that all but one student improved their grade on. This goal also had more questions on it than the previous three goals. This goal seemed the easiest to learn due to the maps that were used. The students really seemed interested in map identifying. The pre-assessment showed that the students had a hard time with Learning Goal 4, so more attention was focused on that learning goal. Some part of our daily assessments had part of all of the learning goals, but the students really enjoyed going up to the dry-erase board and drawing the State-Shapes of multiple countries and naming them correctly. The students also seemed to have learned more about sovereignty and how it defines a country. On the first day, students were asked to take the pre-assessment and could not really seem to be able to identify the different types of State-Shapes or able to –isms, (nationalism, imperialism), or even the definition of sovereignty. With no

One thing that can cause a shift in cost and profitability is that the months seem to fluctuate. It was stated in the passage that these numbers that were given are from March 2000, but there are other months when they have more demand and more sales. This means that these numbers might not always be the same, or even close for that matter since some months the machines have worked 12,000 hours before whereas they were only working for 11,200 in March. They also stated that the factory has handled up to 180 production runs whereas they only handled 160 production runs in March. Additionally, to that the passage also stated that there have been months whenever the Wilkerson Company has had 400 shipments and for March they only experienced 300.

Ask yourself a few questions next time you’re faced with a decision on how to spend your time and energy.

This leads Alex and his team to come up with the theory of constraints. A theory, which used properly, will let any manager utilize all of Jonah’s concepts correctly and in theory make the company profitable. The theory is broken down into five steps: “1. IDENTIFY the system’s constraint(s). 2 Decide how to EXPLOIT the system’s constraint(s). 3.SUBORDINATE everything else to the above decision. 4. ELEVATE the system’s constraint(s). 5. WARNING!!! If in the previous steps a constraint has been broken, go back to step 1, but do not allow INERTIA to cause a system’s constraint” (Cox & Goldratt 307).

When I was a high school student, I wanted nothing more than to put my schooling experience behind me. The day that I graduated, I thought to myself, “finally! I am done!” After everything settled down after graduation, I got a job as a shift supervisor at a Boston Market in Littleton, Colorado. After about a year of working there, I realized that I wanted a better life for myself. So what does one do when they want a better life and their parents can’t talk them into going to college? They join the Military. So, in August of 2006, that is exactly what I did. Just about four years later, I finally realized that to get anywhere in this world now a days, you need to have some form of a college education.

The personal goals that I want to achieve as a student of the University of Phoenix are in the education and career areas of my life. In my education, my major goal is to gain knowledge in computers and network administration, eventually culminating in a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology. I also wish to strengthen my grammar and interpersonal skills. In my career, my goal is to either advance from my current career as a paralegal to that of an office manager or to enter into a different career as information technology department administrator. I will use staff and university services in order to achieve my goals in a reasonable timeframe with limited obstacles.

The materials management systems need to be updated. They are never truly up-to-date or real time amounts. The case says that the systems are usually a day or two behind so Roger never actually knows what he has in stock. In order for Roger Gray to be able to do his job more effectively it would help if he knew what he had on hand at any given time. Upgraded computer and company software and hardware as a whole would make the company more efficient. The company may also need to find a different way of controlling and monitoring stock numbers. Possibly people could alert Roger or one of his fellow staff members when they are taking a load of materials to a new place or area of the plant so he is aware of where everything is at all times.

Using my social care work placement (Sense Scotland) as a reference, I have compiled a report which fully covers effective team working in care settings. The report consists of a three-part structure, which documents: the factors which contribute to good team working, the importance of interpersonal skills, and the contribution of performance review and goal-setting to the success of any organisation.

A typical problem within most factories includes the overhead which tend to be redundant if not paid close attention to. Another would be the absorption variance which indicates a significant amount of products with little to no customer demand. There is a study which explained in 2008 General Motors and Chrysler Corporation were impacted severely by the “overhead absorption” thought process. However, the manufacturing plant continued to build cars based of the “economic” demand quantities, ultimately spending large amounts of cash. This resulted in supplying hundred of thousands of