The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

In reading The Goal, I was not completely sure what to expect when I first began to read it. I was told that it was a novel, but at the same time I was being required to read it for an engineering Statistical Quality Control class, so I figured it would be quite interesting to see a novel used to explain something for engineering.

The novel, as soley a a story, was entertaining and brings up many aspects of life that pertain to working and how it relates with having a family. The interesting part about this aspect of the book, is that it utilizes the theory of the book as a whole, which pertains to engineering and manufacturing, showing the theory to be more universal.

The theory that I have spoken of is mainly that of having a goal and making sure that the goal remains the focus. This theory is the basis for all else that is presented in the book, although it is not the only theory presented. The theory of constraints is also spoken of and many other specific thoughts in the area of manufacturing.

Overall, I found this book to be very useful in bringing my view of how to approach problems, and in many ways life, to focus. It was an excellent reminder that we need to remember what we are doing and understand the implications of actions, but most of all, to focus on what we are trying to achieve.

I'll keep this short. Over the years I've read all kinds of books that try to teach you something that more often than not teach you how to sleep while reading. When someone recommended this book to me I thought, here we go again, but I was wrong. This book was fun to read and I had a hard time putting it down. Its goal was to teach you a few things and not one hundred which is how people both learn and retain. I highly recommend this book to everyone and its message goes beyond just manufacturing but can be applied to many different areas both in the work place and out.

If your organization/plant faces the classic problem of Quality, Cost & Delivery: "why can't we consistently get a quality product out the door on time at the cost that can beat the competition?" or if you have a plant manager who is "always promoting some new thing he's doing, and most of the time what he's doing isn't any different from the things everyone else is doing", then you better read this book and make others to read it as well.

This book introduced the Theory of Constraints to the world of business and has made its way to B-Schools as a textbook. Eliyahu Goldratt has done an excellent job in explaining his theory using a novel-style writing. It is a story of a struggling plant manager to improve his plant's performance and save it from closure. The expert in this story provoked the main character to "derive his solutions by supplying the question marks instead of exclamation marks".

Recommended read for every professional in manufacturing.

The concept(s) in this book are a key part of the lean manufacturing grouping of concepts. This is one of the little hinges that swing big doors. It is a high leveragbe activity to identify your constraints and to focus improvements at this constraint.

I found THE GOAL a book written in a direct language. My personal interest toward the topic takes me to look forward to the next book that the author wrote. Perhaps it's not only a question of Economics.