The Goal, by Eliyahu M. Goldratt examines the life of an American plant manger in his
quest to find out what exactly the goal of a plant manager is and how to go about
reaching
this goal. Along the way towards realizing the goal, the plant manager is forced define
and understand the theory of constraints. It is important to understand the theory of
constraints for the manager to be able to identify what restrictions are being opposed
onto
his various operations and to know how to reverse their affects. In this particular case
it
takes the manager having to continually deal with orders being finished late and
therefore
unsatisfied customers and an irate employer in order to realize that serious problems
are
occurring within his plant.Once the goal, which inevitably turns out to be money, is
found, it is imperative to figure out how to express the goal in the form of a
measurement.
Three measurements are able to not only express the goal of making money, but also
make it possible for the manager to develop operational rules for running his plant.
These
measurements are: throughput, inventory, and operational expense, and everything that
the manager manages in his plant is covered by them. Still, the manager must do much
thinking and research in order to figure out just how to express his goal in terms of
these
measurement.In addition to expressing the goal, the manager is troubled by whether
employees, robots, and machinery actuall need to be running at all times. At first
glance
many managers seem to think that an idle worker is an unproductive worker, but Goldratt
shows us that in reality a plant in which everyone is working all the time is very
inefficient. The manager in the book soon ...