The Goal: 40th Anniversary Edition: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

When I was first assigned to read this book, I thought it was going to be a purely theoretical material. I thought it was going to be a book difficult to read and/or keep me interested to continue reading. However, this book turned to be a marvelous composition. The reader is always interested in the topic, and one can feel like being part of the plot. This book is a perfect combination of a narrative, and an explanation. The author dedicated the time and effort to make sure that anyone, who grabs this book and reads it, will be able to clearly understand the material presented. As an industrial engineering student, we are focused on improving an existent process and/or system in a facility. Moreover, we are provided with a broad set of techniques that can be utilized in accomplishing this purpose. The Goal by Goldratt is a magnificent piece of literature where industrial engineering student can see how the different techniques learned in class are applied into a real world problem. In The Goal, Goldratt also provides the reader with a description and an example of how to apply the Theory of Constraints. Alex Rogo, a plant engineer at UniCo Manufacturing, is presented with a complex problem; he has several months of orders overdue and his plant is not capable of delivering any order in time. Therefore, Bill Peach, Alex’s boss, tells him that he has only three months to turn his plant around. As a result, Alex and his team start working in finding a solution; however, they are not capable to find it without the help of Jonah, Alex’s Physics professor. Nonetheless, it is important to mention that Jonah does not provide Alex with immediate solutions; instead, he uses the Socratic Method to teach Alex how to be able to localize the bottlenecks and non-bottlenecks of his process and to determine the goal of his plant. Therefore, after spending several days thinking about what the goal is, he is finally able to define it as “Reducing operational expenses and inventory while increasing throughput” (Goldratt 87). Jonah also teaches Alex that in every company there is dependent events and statistical fluctuations that affect the process. According to the Theory of Constraints, one must identify the bottleneck and then work around it; in other words, one must take into account the bottleneck in order to increase throughput and ultimately reach the goal. Jonah, however, after providing Alex with enough help, he takes a step back on his role and forces Alex to learn how to be able to identify the bottlenecks on his own and what approach or process to use to fix the bottlenecks. At the end, Alex finally understands that it is of utmost importance for any individual to be able to answer three questions: “‘what to change?’, ‘what to change to?’, and ‘how to cause a change?’” (Goldratt 337). Overall, The Goal is a magnificent work that I highly recommend to any individual to read in order to understand more about the Theory of Constraints and how to become a better manager. I deeply believe that any individual who reads this book will be greatly benefited from the material presented; in my personal experience, I am pleased that I was able to read this book since I was given the opportunity to add a new technique to my engineering toolbox. I encourage any reader that is uncertain whether or not to buy this book to purchase it. I believe that it is definitely worth the time reading this book; thanks to this book, I feel better prepared as an engineer.

The Goal, by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox Chapter 1 The plant is anchoring down the entire company. Rogo has run the plant for 6 months and has 3 months to turn the plant around. Rogo’s home life is stressful due to his lack of attention towards his family. Bill indicated the plant has many inefficiencies. Bill’s visit resulted in a master machinist quitting during an operation. The master machinist quitting resulted in damage to the crucial NCX-10 machine. Rogo blames Bill’s interference for the numerical control machine, NCX-10, being down. Bill promised order 41427 will ship today, but it requires the NCX-10 to complete. Chapter 2 Rogo comes home in the evening for a short dinner before returning to the plant. Rogo forgot he had promised his wife a night in town. Bearington is a decaying factory town losing a plant a year for over a decade. The NCX-10 is repaired. First shift had been held over for overtime, against policy. People are carrying parts one at a time and walking with them. Individuals throughout the plant are being shifted to work on order 41427. 41427 shipping cost a machinist, repairs, overtime, and lost productivity. Half the plant has already been laid off. There are work-in-process issues causing inventory to stack up. Rogo has an engineering degree and an MBA. Rogo has become a stranger to his wife and kids. Chapter 3 Rogo wakes up the next morning and daydreams on his way to work. He ponders about a company wide meeting Peach is holding and what it's about. Rogo wonders why Peach’s attitude has changed. Rogo reminisces on the fun nights him and Peach had a few years ago. As he walks in the corporate building he’s greeted by Nathan. Nathan tells him about how the whole division is going to the chopping block. He finally makes it to the conference room and sits down as Peach begins talking. Rogo has a hard time paying attention during the meeting. His thoughts are racing. Rogo looks for a pen in his suit jacket pocket but pulls out a cigar. He begins to remember why he has that cigar. Chapter 4 Rogo is still sitting in the meeting but still isn’t paying attention. His train of thought goes to two weeks ago when he’s at O’Hare airport. He’s at O’Hare because he’s headed to Houston for a robotics conference. While he’s waiting for his flight, he runs into an old physicist professor, Jonah. He begins chatting with Jonah about the productivity and efficiencies of Rogo’s plant. Jonah is studying the science of manufacturing organizations As they talk, Jonah understands Rogo’s plant problems and begins questioning Rogo. Jonah warns Rogo that efficiency measurements are lying to him. Jonah asks Rogo what he thinks productivity really is to define it. Rogo thinks long and hard about the question of productivity. He tells Jonah that it means he’s accomplishing something in terms of goals. Jonah is late for his flight and they both run to the gate as they continue talking. Jonah gives Rogo a cigar. Productivity is the act of bringing a company closer to its goal. Productivity is meaningless without a well defined goal. At the aircraft door, Rogo asks Jonah what every company’s goal really is. Rogo can’t understand the meaning of productivity until he knows what the goal is. Chapter 5 Rogo snaps back to reality and remembers he’s still in the company meeting. He still is not paying much attention and only hears a little of what is said. Peach calls for a break and everyone leaves except Rogo. Rogo thinks for a minute, gets up, and ditches the meeting. He gets in his car and just drives for a while, contemplating what Jonah had said to him. He gets hungry and stops off at a pizza joint before heading back to his plant. Across the highway from the plant is a hill where Rogo parks his car and eats. As he sits there he continues to think about what productivity and efficiency really mean. He lists possible goals: quality, efficiency, productivity, technology, and sales. He concludes the goal of a manufacturing organization must be to make money. Chapter 6 Rogo walks into the plant and finds workers idle, relaxing and not working. Rogo scolds their supervisor for allowing idle workers and demands they be active. Even if those workers were producing, would they be making the company money? Rogo sits with accountant Lou to discuss the company's goal. Lou explains a relative measurement like ROI helps more than net profit. Lou mentions cash flow is critical to any company's survival. Lou agrees to help Rogo save the plant. Rogo writes down 3 critical measurements: net profit, ROI, and cash flow. Rogo writes down: the goal is to increase net profit, ROI, and cash flow. Rogo calls Julie late at night and realizes he’s missed his postponed night with her. Rogo thinks it difficult to teach connecting the plant’s operations to company evaluation. Chapter 7 Rogo returns home late. His daughter gets all A's in her report card. Rogo considers calling a headhunter but feels a responsibility to stay at the plant. Rogo decides to find Jonah, the manufacturing scientist. Chapter 8 Rogo gets swamped with meetings all day and forgets to find Jonah. Rogo goes to his mother's to contact Jonah. Jonah returns his call and agrees that The Goal of an organization is to make money. How can Rogo know if his plant's internal evaluations really measure productivity? Jonah has developed measurements which express The Goal for manufacturing. Jonah's measurements are throughput, inventory, and operational expense. Throughput is the rate at which the system generates money through sales. Inventory is all the money the system has invested in purchasing things which it intends to sell. Operational Expense is all the money the system spends in order to turn inventory into throughput. The Goal must be expressed in terms of these measurements. Jonah hangs up and Rogo sleeps at his mother’s house. Chapter 9 Rogo awakes at 11 a.m. and calls his secretary for plant updates. The CEO is coming to the plant next month to record a video. Rogo leaves his mother’s house for his home to clean up. Throughput, did the plant sell more products? Inventory, did the plant’s inventories go down? Operational Expense, did the plant layoff employees after adding robots? The Goal: Increase Throughput while decreasing Inventory and Operational Expense. At the plant, Rogo studies the effect adding robots has had on sales with the accountant. Sales for the plant’s products are either flat or declining. Requiring robots to operate at high efficency is causing inventory to pile up. Inventory of unused parts is piling causing an increase in carrying costs. Chapter 10 Throughput is the money coming in. Inventory is the money currently inside the system. Operational Expense is the money we have to payout to make Throughput happen. Rogo realizes that every part of the plant can be placed in the three measurements. Rogo understands the robots have been counterproductive with respect to The Goal. Rogo needs to create a plan to be productive towards The Goal so he calls Jonah again. Rogo plans to leave for New York to meet Jonah at his hotel in the morning for breakfast. Chapter 11 At home, Rogo’s wife is deeply upset by his recent behavior. He leaves for the airport. Rogo and the manufacturing scientist meet, but he is too busy to be a consultant. Rogo asks Jonah how much he is going to need to pay for Jonah’s help. Jonah wants no pay if the plant folds. His compensation is to be part of the new profits. Jonah says often pushing for high efficiencies can take us away from The Goal. Jonah says a plant where everyone is always working is highly inefficient. A balanced plant is where capacity of each resource is balanced with market demand. The closer you come to a balanced plant, the closer you are to bankruptcy. Jonah claims it is wrong to assume trimming capacity to balance with market demand will have no effect on throughput or inventory. Jonah has a mathematical proof showing when capacity is trimmed to market demand that throughput goes down and inventory goes up. More inventory increases carrying costs, an operational expense. Dependent Events and Statistical Fluctuations when considered together explain this. Rogo flies back home. Chapter 12 Rogo questions his wife about where she stayed last night and who the kids stayed with. Julie is lonely, feeling abandoned, and left for a night to vent to a friend. Rogo explains he is always away from home because he is trying to support the family. Rogo promises to spend more time with the family including the whole weekend. Chapter 13 Rogo’s and son start off the weekend on a trail hike with a Boy Scouts troop. He connects hiking to Jonah’s Dependent Events and Statistical Fluctuations. The troop formed a line that is lengthening due to an accumulation of the fluctuations. The troop’s line dependency limits higher fluctuations in regard to shortening the line. Rogo conceptualizes a model of the troop’s line analogous to a manufacturing plant. Throughput is Rogo’s walking rate since he is trailing the line. Inventory is the distance between the line leader and Rogo at the rear. Operational Expense is the energy the whole troop expends to progress down the trial. Rogo’s throughput is influenced by the line’s slow statistical fluctuations accumulating. Chapter 14 On the trial, on lunch break, Rogo conceptualizes a new model with bowls and matches. Bowls are lined up and die rolls move matches from bowl to bowl until a final bowl. Throughput is the speed matches come out the last bowl. Bowls: stages of production. Inventory total matches in all the bowls at a given time. Operational Expense is a hypothetical carrying cost for the total matches in bowls. Input bowls had no issues. Bowls near outputs became swamped with inventory. Chapter 15 Lunch ends and the hike resumes. The kid’s lineup with the fastest first. Fat Herbie is in front of Rogo. Herbie constrains Rogo’s throughput. Rogo stops the troop and flips it around so Herbie leads. The troop stays together. Herbie is slowed by his heavy bag. The troop redistributes his load so he can go faster. No longer burdened, Herbie speeds up. Throughput soars and inventory stays low. Chapter 16 Rogo returns home finding his wife has left. She wrote him a short explanatory note. Rogo calls Jane and Julie’s parents, but no one knows where she has gone. Chapter 17 Rogo struggles to take care of the kids in the morning and get them to school. Mr. Smyth is now Rogo’s boss and he demands 100 sub-assemblies by the end of day. Rogo has a conference with his staff trying to explain his ideas from the hiking trip. Rogo draws out a schedule plan for 100 sub-assemblies by day’s end using robots. He’s confident Dependent Events and Statistical Fluctuations will prevent shipment. The setup crew is late thus delaying the robot’s throughput. Rogo was right. Chapter 18 Rogo returns home from work. Julie called their son, and she will be away for a while. Rogo awakes to an easier morning with his mother’s assistance. At work his team is ready to work towards The Goal after seeing it in-person yesterday. A resource’s capacity cannot be measured in isolation, but where it is in the plant. Rogo calls Jonah again. The whole staff gathers around the phone to listen. Jonah tells Rogo he must differentiate between bottleneck and nonbottleneck resources. Bottlenecks are resources whose capacity is less than or equal to demand placed on it. Non-Bottlenecks are resources whose capacity is greater than demand placed on it. Jonah insists they not balance capacity with demand, but flow of product with demand. Bottlenecks should produce just under market demand in case the market drops. The staff begins to group parts of the plant as work centers and look for bottlenecks. It should be easy to spot a Bottleneck by looking for where inventory is piling up. The NCX-10 is a bottleneck. It does the combined work of 3 old machines it replaced. Another bottleneck is the Heat-treat that never runs full due to expeditors trying to ship. The company lacks the funds to alleviate the bottlenecks by increasing their capacity. Chapter 19 At home, Rogo eats and prepares to head to the airport to pick up Jonah. Rogo gives Jonah the background on the plant as they leave the airport. Jonah arrives insisting they must increase bottleneck capacity with hidden capacity. They find the NCX-10 machine idle as its workers are on break. Jonah tells them to negotiate with the union so that the NCX-10 is never idle. They tell Jonah they lack the necessary old machines the NCX-10 replaced. At the heat-treat, Jonah asks if there are vendors who can do the heat-treat work. Jonah asks why the heat-treat is working on parts that don’t contribute to throughput. Put Q.C. in front of bottlenecks so bottleneck time isn’t wasted working on bad parts. Jonah stated it is more critical to check assumptions than calculations. He also stated the capacity of the plant is equal to the capacity of the bottleneck. “The actual cost per hour of a bottleneck resource is the total expense of the system divided by the number of hours the bottleneck produces.” Bottleneck time is wasted if it is idle, working on defective parts, and working on unnecessary parts. Bottleneck capacity can be increased by shifting processing to non-bottleneck resources or paying a vendor for processing. Rogo goes home. He wakes up to eat breakfast. His wife had called the kids again. Chapter 20 Jonah takes a cab to the airport. Rogo calls Julie's parents to discover she is there. Julie doesn't want to come to the phone due to years of neglect. The accountant determined only 80% of the products flow through the bottlenecks. The staff agrees to follow through with Jonah's suggested changes. QC moved in front of bottlenecks. Bottlenecks processing now prioritizes the latest orders first. Rogo goes to Julie's parents house and goes on a walk with Julie. Chapter 21 Rogo asks Julie on a date. 90% of late orders have parts that flow through the bottleneck. Rogo explains the situation to the union representative, but he isn't fully convinced. Not all parts are available for the NCX-10. They make a system to prevent future issues. Rogo explains to the plant Red tagged parts with lowest numbers are top priorities. The union representative is understanding and agrees to the new policies. Rogo picks Julie up at her parent’s home. Chapter 22 The system modifications appear to have been successful, but they are insufficient. Rogo wants to offload bottlenecks to other work units or an outside company. Yellow tags are now to be used for post-bottleneck parts. Bob brings in a machine to help support the NCX-10 bottleneck. Chapter 23 Rogo reminisces about his date a few days ago that went well enough. Heat-treat workers are reducing plant productivity by not understanding the plan. Permanent workers are assigned to the bottleneck to prevent machine idle time. Recalling laid-off workers isn’t an option. The best workers are placed on bottlenecks. Non-bottleneck workers are transferred to the bottlenecks as needed. A company across town takes on the plant’s remaining heat-treat work. Rogo meets with the night shift foreman to review his innovations for heat-treatment. Rogo decreases efficiency of some work groups to increase plant productivity. Chapter 24 The staff celebrate a record productivity month. Rogo’s boss calls and does the same. The staff get drunk and party all night. Stacy drops a drunk Rogo off at his home. Julie has come back home to stay, but assumes the worst with Stacy so she drives off. Increasing bottleneck throughput has led to new bottlenecks in the plant. Stacy calls Julie to explain matters. Julie plans to return by Wednesday. Chapter 25 Jonah again arrives at the plant from the airport. He and staff tour the issues in the plant. Bottleneck feeders are prioritizing bottleneck Red parts and largely ignoring others. Jonah explains keeping non-bottlenecks active creates excess inventory. Constant use of non-bottlenecks is inefficient since they don’t contribute to throughput. Jonah presents linear combinations of non-bottlenecks, Y, and bottlenecks, X. X into Y, Y into X, X and Y into assembly, and X into A and Y into B. In combination, these four building blocks can represent any manufacturing situation. Activating non-bottlenecks beyond bottleneck capacity creates inventory, not throughput. Activating a resource and utilizing a resource are not synonymous. Utilizing a resource occurs when it moves the system towards The Goal. We must not seek to optimize every resource in the system. Chapter 26 Rogo brainstorms with his kids how to tie the bottlenecks to inventory releases. The data analysts reviewed data suggesting two weeks is the bottleneck lead time. The bottlenecks will determine the release of materials in the plant. Payroll costs are the same for active and idle workers. Inventory ties up money. Rogo and staff agree lower efficiencies are fine if productivity increases. Chapter 27 May’s meeting of the plant managers begins. Rogo’s plant is the only one showing profit. Peach tells Rogo good job. Rogo gets more praise from others. Rogo doesn’t want to inform Peach of drastic changes for fear of a decision reversal. Peach says he’ll keep the plant open if Rogo can deliver a fantastic month again. Rogo leaves the meeting to spend time with Julie at her parents. Rogo and Julie go for a walk. She has felt ignored because Rogo is obsessive. Rogo tries to apply The Goal to his marriage with Julie, but she brushes it off. Chapter 28 Rogo makes it home at sunset when Jonah calls. They discuss plant improvements. Jonah suggests cutting batch sizes in half for non-bottleneck processes. Queue Time, time a part waits on a resource to finish working on another part. Setup, time a part spends waiting on a resource to prepare itself to work on the part. Process Time, time the resource spends modifying the part making it more valuable. Wait Time, time spent waiting on another part so they can be assembled together. Queue and Wait times are high in the plant. The Economical Batch Quantity (EBQ) formula has several flawed assumptions. Half-sized batches reduce inventory’s cash flow pressure and speeds up flow of parts. An hour saved at a non-bottleneck is a mirage. Rogo meets with the marketing director to get additional orders made with customers. Chapter 29 Rogo and Julie spend a night together, but Rogo wakes up very early. The plant has mostly turned around due to the various implemented changes. Measuring cost per part is artificially inflated due to direct labor with half-sized batches. Rogo and the accountant decide to skew the numbers to reflect the last two months. Marketing calls Rogo about a possible thousand units completed in two weeks. Control modules are the unit’s constraint. Staff ponders cutting batches in half again. The thousand unit job is purchased at 250 units per week for four weeks. Chapter 30 The plant achieved 17% percent, ahead of the 15% agreed to with Peach. Peach sets up a meeting at headquarters for Rogo’s plant to be evaluated. The productivity manager came to the plant to shoot a video, but the robots were too idle. The productivity manager sends an audit team to review the plant’s accounting. The thousand unit order customer arrives by helicopter to shake everyone’s hand. Helicopter customer increases his order from 1,000 to 10,000. Rogo and Julie decide to set goals for their continued marriage.

When I first picked up this book, I don’t know what I was expecting. Needless to say this book has both surpassed my expectations and is definitely something I would recommend to someone else. The story starts off following the day of Alex Rogo, a plant manager for UniCo manufacturing plant. As the division for his company starts to go under, he is tasked with a seemingly impossible task: improve the company’s profit within three months or the plant will be shut down. Assisted by an old teacher, Jonah, Alex learns how to analyze the true problems of the plant and implement them with the help of his co-workers, Ralph, Bob, and Stacey. Written in mind for anyone interested in Industrial Engineering and its effect on manufacturing, Goldratt has really created an outstanding book to explain the idea of the theory constraints. Through the use of first person and the setting of a real-life situation, we are able to both relate to the idea and see the practicality of its use in an actual plant, such as the idea of bottlenecks and its effect on inventory and operational expense. The breakdown of the idea is explained through the excellent dialogue between the characters and shows how although the “the goal” can be identified, improvements are not easy to find and implementation can be just as difficult, if not harder. This implementation is represented by the struggles Alex faces with upper management, marketing, and sales. Goldratt’s choice to explain the material in the form of a fiction novel makes this incredibly understandable and makes its extremely easy to go through the process of thinking about the theory of constraints. Reading this book has seriously made me consider the ramifications of constraint and how it effects “goal” when it comes to a process. When it comes down to it, whatever we do and whatever we choose to improve must, in the end, aid us in reaching our “goal.” Until we learn to identify what we want, we cannot improve or change the way things are done. I would definitely recommend Goldratt’s book for anyone who enjoys both a good story and the idea of ongoing improvement.

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt is a business novel and is a great book to read to prepare for industry people. As an industrial engineering major student, I really enjoyed when I was reading. This book tells a story, which is really easy to understand. The main character for this book is Alex Rogo, who is the plant manager for UniCo Manufacturing. He was told that he only has three months to run this plant to a good state by Bill Peach, a company executive. Alex Rogo met his college physicist professor, Jonah, in the airport. Jonah is an expert on manufacturing management. He tried to help Alex Rogo to solve plant problems with a lot phone call meetings. As a reader and an engineering student, I understand Alex Rogo really wants to keep this company for sake of many employers and his family. Because he knew that his wife just new to this town, he doesn’t want to her to move again, and plus he grew up in this old town, Bearington. Because Alex Rogo has spent a lot of time to solve plant problems, he was too busy to spend time with his family. Therefore, his marriage got trouble as well. His wife, Julie, feels lonely and boring living in this old town, and she left her family. I think The Goal is a great book that can be used in management colleges to teach students about the importance of strategic capacity planning and constraint management. The book involves some aspects in a manufacturing process. In the book The Goal, Jonah teaches Alex Rogo by using the Socratic method. All the time, when Alex asks for help from Jonah, Jonah would never give him answer directly; instead, Jonah poses a question to him, which makes him to think and solve problems. Eventually, Alex finds out the Socratic method to solve his marital problem and proposes a solution to solve his plant problem

The Goal: 40th Anniversary Edition is an excellent book for anyone in business! It’s insightful, practical, and full of lessons on improving processes and achieving goals. The storytelling makes complex concepts easy to understand, and it’s a must-read for professionals looking to sharpen their skills. Highly recommend!

The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt is a novel. I found that the book very interesting and easy to read. The main character in the book is Alex Rogo, a plant mangaer. He is dealing with a difficult situation which is he needs to find a way to improve the production of his plant in 90 days, otherwise they will shut down the plant and of course he will get jobless. At the same time, he is also going through a very difficult marriage; his wife always complains about he doesn’t have time for her. Alex seeks advice from Jonah, an old Physicist. He told Alex that if he wanted to solve the problem, he needed to find out what is the main goal, then later Alex found that the goal is to make more money. He got introduced by The Theory of Constraints, and he learned how important it was. To accomplish the goal of making more money, the following steps are required to be done. The first step is to increase throughput. The second step is to reduce inventory. The last but not least is to reduce the operation expense In my opinion, the book is very helpful; it contains a lot of great knowledge. It shows the important elements in managements such as 1. Determine your goal: What is really important to your company? 2. Recording data: Recording data properly will help you keep track the money which is your goal 3. Be active in thinking: always look for new solution, never accept the presence. 4. Know how to work in a team 5. Be determined: never accept the failure. Keep working on the problems. Besides that, the book also introduces reader the Theory of Constraints. The following steps are used to improve the constraints in general. 1. Identify what controls and limits the output production in a company. 2. Figure out ways to improve the output production without increasing the inventory. 3. Limits the bottle necks 4. Elevate the performance of the constraint 5. Continue working on the previous step

Had to get this for a college course, but still enjoyed the story line and lessons the book taught.

The book came quickly and was delivered on time and in perfect shape.

Devo ammettere che quando ho acquistato "The Goal" ero abbastanza scettico verso il genere business novel. Le consideravo come l'esposizione di una teoria (magari anche valida) presentata dietro una storia non all'altezza, e anzi creata in maniera forzata per rendere la teoria più facile da comprendere. Questo libro ha distrutto questa convinzione: non tratta i concetti come un asettico elenco di tesi, ma fa li sviluppare in maniera progressiva ai vari personaggi, passo dopo passo. E anche questo sviluppo non avviene in modo perfetto e lineare ma, proprio come nel mondo reale, si deve far fronte a tentativi, a errori e non di rado a dietrofront. La storia si svolge intorno al personaggio di Alex Rogo, direttore di un impianto industriale che ha appena ricevuto l'ultimatum di aumentare la produttività per evitare la chiusura. Nel corso del tempo datogli a disposizione per portare a casa l'obiettivo, Alex inizia ad interrogarsi su cosa significa "produttività". Per il suo impianto "produttività" non significava produrre di più, ma andare verso l'obiettivo aziendale: fare soldi. E ogni passo verso fare soldi è produttivo, ogni passo che non lo aiuta, non lo è. Quindi, individua l'obiettivo di "aumentare il throughput" (il tasso con cui il sistema genera denaro attraverso le vendite) riducendo sia l'inventario (il denaro investito dal sistema per acquistare la materia prima) sia le spese operative (tutto il denaro che i sistemi spendono per trasformare l'inventario in throughput). In questo libro, Eliyahu M. Goldratt presenta la sua Theory of Constraints (la Teoria dei Vincoli) secondo cui, per migliorare qualsiasi catena di processo, è necessario: - trovare il vincolo che limita il throughput - decidere come sfruttare il vincolo - subordinare tutto il resto alle decisioni di cui sopra - elevare il vincolo del sistema Se nel passaggio precedente, un vincolo è stato superato, la TOC indica di tornare al passaggio 1, ma non consente l'inerzia. A partire da questo libro sono state aperte strade infinite nel mondo del Project Management. Una lettura obbligatoria (essendo anche molto piacevole) per chi lavora nel mondo della produzione, a qualsiasi livello.

Excellent book and a must read for engineering professionals. 👍👍

It is a good book !

Another great read another great book for my collection inspirational education

This book was recommended by a Lean Six Sigma expert. I have loved it from day 1. If you are a manager and not read this, the chances y9u are doing the wrong thing is very high.