“The goal is about people trying to understand what makes their world tick so that they can make it better”(iii). It’s about learning the consequences of a manager’s positive and negative actions when running a production process. The author, Eliyahu Goldratt, presents this to his readers in a form of a captivating novel about a man who not only has to deal with the problems that occur at work on a day-today basis, but also the problems that he deals with at home. Alex Rogo is the plant manager who is constantly struggling to meet the output requirements that is needed to keep his plant booming. As with many companies he deals with a consistent lack of

Later on, Jonah goes on to present Alex with the notion of running a balanced plant. Within this plant there exist two specific phenomena, which also need to be balanced in order to achieve his three measurements. Jonah describes them as dependant events, and statistical fluctuations (88), and only after his overnight hike with his son, does Alex begin to understand the meaning behind these phenomena (100). Shortly after Alex’s ‘outdoor revelation’ Jonah informs him about singling out a type of resource within the plant, which he refers to as a bottleneck. This refers to anything whose demand is greater than its capacity (139). This proves to be of great importance, because Alex’s plant is about to make a complete turnaround, based on the discovery of this resource.

If we get rid of defective part(s) before they reach the bottleneck, all that we lose are the defective parts. But if we get rid of the defective part(s) after it has passed the bottleneck, then we have lost time that cannot be recovered.

Rogo, as well as his employees, did not care about the numbers despite their importance. They only cared about the system and whether it was functioning properly. Their main concern was parts produced per hour, orders filled, and total labor hours worked. Unfortunately this was not enough to end the crisis and save the plant.

It is vital that everyone in the company know the purpose for which the company operates. Jonah helps Rogo establish a means to connect the goals of the company with the goals of that particular plant. Jonah helps to create a measurement, which expresses the goal of making money by increasing net profit, return on investment, and cash flow as, “throughput inventory, and operational expenses” (60). They define throughput as, “the rate at which the system generates money through sales” (60). Jonah explains that often times people confuse sales with production, when in actuality if it is not bought, then it is not throughput (60). Inventory is then explained as being, “all the money that the company has invested in the things it wished to sell” (60). Now that all that is known, the dilemma is how this all can be related to your plant. Through the understanding of these measurements, Rogo realizes that to ensure throughput is to increasing as both inventory an operating is decreasing (67). As Rogo examines his company’s inventory seems to only be increasing. With the utilization of robots, this should have lowered his company’s cost per unit, but it did the opposite. It is pointless to have parts that could not be assembled into a finished product, when it only increases cost (72).

Some topics in this essay:
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