Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Entertaining and Informative - A Unique Approach to Teaching
Goldratt carefully combines strategy and fiction into his book, The Goal, providing a resource no manufacturing manager should miss. The story follows Alex Rogo as he races to improve profitability at his plant while also saving his rocky marriage. Goldratt employs a unique writing style, weaving the basic concepts of manufacturing strategy directly into the narrative. The Goal is a quick read that both entertains and informs. How often is a plant manager asked to "improve efficiency" by keeping the assembly line flowing, reducing employee downtime, and increasing inventory stockpiles? Far too often, according to Goldratt, who convincingly proves that 'bottleneck' activities are the ultimate constraint in a manufacturing system. Likening bottlenecks to the slowest member of a hiking group, he contends a manufacturing line can only move as fast as its slowest activity - a bottleneck activity. Poor production planning can result in an inventory pileup in front of a bottleneck activity. Activities circumventing the bottleneck cause inventory problems in assembly and are similarly constrained by market demand. The solution is to pull inventory through the bottleneck activities according to this demand, while utilizing non-bottleneck activities as necessary. Idle time at non-bottlenecks is perfectly acceptable. Goldratt also examines the critical flaw of cost accounting systems - reducing total product costs do not simply correlate to higher profits. In many manufacturing organizations, performance measures are based upon efficiencies and variances, rather than bottom-line impact. Therefore, the goal of management (make more money) is misaligned with that of the front-line worker (increase efficiency). They are simple, yet often forgotten lessons. What is the GOAL of a business? It is simply to make more money, and any action you take towards that goal is a good decision. Any action taking you away from that goal is a poor decision. Goldratt makes the distinction clear both in a personal and professional context. He concludes his discussion by asking the reader to consider how such action can successfully be implemented across an organization. Without providing a definitive answer, he implores the reader to examine the lessons learned throughout his writing - seek and ye shall find. One word of warning can be drawn from the narrative - many managers will be tempted to duplicate the examples without regard for the process leading to those conclusions. Many will consider their own organization a "special case" to which these lessons do not apply. Such criticism is clearly unfounded; the true lesson of The Goal is that change is implemented through a process of ongoing improvement specific to each organization. The framework outlined through the narrative is broad, providing the fundamentals necessary to drill down into the core problems plaguing manufacturing profitability. For successfully authoring an entertaining and informative composition, based upon the Socratic method, Goldratt deserves high praise.
Rating:  - Novel Ideas About Process Improvement
Goldratt has been an especially prolific author in recent years. This is the first of three books; the others are It's Not Luck (1997) and Critical Chain (1997). He wrote this book with Jeff Cox, author of Zapp!: The Lightening of Empowerment: How to Improve Quality, Productivity, and Employee Satisfaction. All decision-makers in organizations (regardless of their size or nature) are constantly preoccupied with improving cycle time, first pass yield and on-time delivery inorder to increase productivity and thereby increase profits. Many of them, perhaps, have a difficult time grasping the core concepts of process improvement systems such as Six Sigma. Goldratt has written a novel in which he provides an analysis of those concepts as applied in a fictional company. He has a cast of characters, a plot, and a context. He relies heavily on dialogue to advance the narrative. As in any other well-written novel, The Goal examines issues in dispute which create conflicts. Ultimately they are resolved, albeit somewhat too neatly. Although of greatest relevance to manufacturing companies, Goldratt's Theory of Constraints (with appropriate modifications) can also be of substantial value to other companies with "bottlenecks" which also delay and often disrupt a process of some kind. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to read Goldratt's other two; also, to check out David Mistress Practice What You Preach and David Whyte's The Heart Aroused. With all due respect to the core concepts of process improvement, they are worthless unless and until embraced by everyone in the given workforce. Master and Whyte can help managers to achieve that "buy in."
Rating: - A must for every CEO, esp. in production management
If you are a manager who likes more to read a fiction than a textbook, Goldratt is exactly for you. "The Goal" gives a thorough picture about principles of Theory of Constraints (TOC) in an straightforward format that is easy to read even to a BBA junior student. The methodology used by Goldratt is something that could be called Aristotelian. The discussions between Jonah and Alex do not provide reader with solutions rather than way of thinking. Quite often reader finds himself thinking on the solutions and finding alternatives even before Alex gets close to them. Apart from some reviewers, I think that even these managers who are not directly dealing with production management should buy this book. I got some interesting ideas even to improve public sector management in Estonia. Things to improve: - the novel was probably finalised in a hurry, the end was a little bit tight. The second idea is to give some charts and tables in order to generalise these ideas that were provided into easy-to-grasp overview. Fortunately Goldratt's second book "It's no luck" was far better in that respect.
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