The Goal

8. Why might Avion want to reduce the lead times on its purchased materials and components?

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.

Now moving into chapter 21 of The Goal, Alex has identified the problems/bottlenecks in his factory. His goal now is to identify the back log of orders and get them through the bottlenecks, get them assembled, and shipped out to the buyers as soon as possible. Alex and his team determines that one of the underlying causes of their present parts pile-up at the bottlenecks is because the operator cannot tell the difference between a bottleneck-destined part and an ordinary one. The operator, in an attempt to keep busy, processes batch after batch of non-bottleneck parts when what they really need to do is work on bottleneck parts. They attempt a solution for this by placing red and green tags on the parts which are destined for a bottleneck

Alex and his team identified two bottlenecks in the plant. One is the NCX-10 machine and the other is the heat-treat process. There are two things that should be done, they have to make sure that the bottlenecks ' time is not wasted, and make the bottlenecks work only on what will contribute to throughput today. They understood that by using non-bottlenecks for efficiency, they have

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.

Plant Manager, Tom Harris greeted everyone by name when he walked through the plant and as far as one could tell, it seemed to be business as usual at DuPont. Most recently, Orion, a DuPont manufacturing operation had been closed, the equipment dismantled and sent to China, but there were no particular concerns regarding this change. When Tom contacted the University of Virginia, he was not looking to solve any particular problem; rather he sought to gather information that would help improve the overall effectiveness of the organization. This was important to him because he was being pressured to do more with less. Tom’s interest was in introducing new ideas to his managers and applying those

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."

The one and only goal for any company should be to make money. Under the theory of constraints, everything that goes towards achieving that particular goal is productive and everything that doesn’t is unproductive. The first bit of advice Jonah gives to Alex involves the big picture view of what is wrong with the plant. Jonah mentions high inventories and failure to achieve shipping dates as most likely the main problems being faced, and asks Alex multiple questions, without giving answers. This back and forth between Alex and Jonah can be described as the socratic method. This method allows a series of questions to be asked but left up to interpretation, so there is no answer given, but critical thinking is required to find a solution. After this method works to perfection and Alex figures out the answer to these questions, he immediately sets up a meeting with an accountant and they outline what is needed such as increasing net profit, return on investment and cash flow.

But then again, the goal isn't clear to everyone. One of the characters in the book, an accountant, responds to an offhand comment about the goal with a confused "The goal? You mean our objectives for the month?" That's sure to strike a chord with a lot of readers.

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.

Investment in the Detroit plant has lagged significantly from other plants in the corporation. As a result, the infrastructure and machinery is outdated, haphazard, and inefficient.

“The Goal” is a book written by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox in 1984. The book is very famous in the management field. In 2004, the author published the third revision of it and celebrated selling over than three million copied of it around the world. Also, the goal book is taught in over than 120 collages. The book was recommended by my professor to be read and summarize as an extra credit.

Alex Rogo is manager for one of UniCo's production plants. Recently Alex's plant, as well as the others in his division, have been having major problems shipping orders on time. The company has considered closing the plant and has given Alex only three months to make a significant improvement or the plant will be closed and he as well as all of his employees will be without a job. At this point everything seems to be crashing down around him while at a meeting, discussing the future of the division, he recalls a chance encounter with an old acquaintance, a physicist named Jonah. During their discussion Alex discovers that Jonah is currently involved in the science of manufacturing organizations. Intrigued Alex

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

The goal is a novel story written by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox. Many copies has been sold worldwide since was first published in 1984. The book has been translated in different languages, which make it easy to read and understand. The reason of the book success is the way how it frames the concept of bottlenecks.