The Goal is a story about overcoming manufacturing problems that is told through the eyes of a plant manager, Alex Rojo. Alex arrives to work one morning only to discover the division vice-president, Bill Peach, showed up unannounced to see the status of a specific customer order number, discovered the order was incomplete, barked orders at employees to assemble the products, and finally informed Mr. Rojo he has only three months to improve his plant's performance before it's closed because the plant cannot get orders out the door on time. In fact, the order Bill investigated was already seven weeks late and the product not even assembled. After Bill departs, Alex heads to the floor to discover Bill's unexpected arrival has created more problems. The master machinest Bill yelled at before Mr. Rojo arrived quit but only after setting up a machine to complete the seven-week-late order that Bill demanded be shipped out today. The machinest, however, forgot to tighten two adjustment nuts on the machine so several parts must be scrapped, but even worse is that the machine, which just so happens to be the only one of its kind in the plant, is broken.
Luckily, the damage was not as bad on the machine as initially thought, and after everyone at the plant worked overtime, the order was shipped very late into the evening. Working overtime is against current division policy, but was necessary to meet Bill's demand about shipping the product today. Afterwards, Alex knows he cannot dedicate the entire plant to just one order and begins to consider why the plant is underperforming when he has good people, good technology, and a good plant. Alex concludes the competition is killing him, specifically the Japanese competition, which is still beating them on price and delivery although Alex's plant has closed the gap in quality and product design. Alex has already cut costs by as much as he can but his prices are still above the competition. Also, Alex's plant has piles of inventory lying around and despite materials being released on schedule, nothing is completed and shipped out on time.
Rumors surface that the entire division will be sold unless performance increases leaving no one with jobs. Alex reflects on a conversation his friend and physicist, Jonah, and realizes his plant is not operating as efficiently as he believed because robots are not decreasing inventory and payroll expense or increasing the number of products shipped.
Introduction: The Goal, written by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox, is a management-oriented novel that illustrates the process of ongoing improvement. The novel revolves around several significant characters, including the main character, Alex Rogo, who is a manager in a manufacturing plant. Another prime character is Mr. Bill Peach, the vice president of the manufacturing plant. Lastly, the key character in the novel is the physicist, Jonah, who was a former professor of Mr. Alex Rogo. There were some other characters too, but these were the most fundamental ones.
Salomon is a company in the manufacturing business that specializes in ski and snowboard equipment. Recently there have been a number of machine malfunctions and problems with the manufacturer machines that cause major delays in the production process. This is a problem because customers’ expectations and the demand for products have to be met and on time. If this problem were to continue we would lose business and would not be able to meet the production needs. Our CEO for Salomon has requested me to write a report on what I believe is the best way to solve this problem in order to improve production time and prevent delays from reoccurring.
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 process. (Jackson, Goldratt, Cox, & American Media Incorporated, 1995)
The beginning of the book starts off with Alex Rogo's plant having major problems and his boss gets on his case about it. His boss, Peach, tells him he has three months to fix these problems or they would be shut down. Rogo has to find a way to improve efficiency in his plant and he is at a loss of how to do that. He thinks that because the plant has new robots that this automatically improves efficiency, right?
He talks to the plant controller about his findings. The book discusses that the plant can make money by increasing net profit while increasing net cash flow. After discussing with the controller, He again calls Jonah to discuss the state of the plant and arranges a breakfast with Alex. Jonah also discusses in detail the goal of the plant to him. Jonah discusses operational expenses, inventory, and throughput, that may lead to the goal. Jonah makes an important point that the manufacturing as a whole unit must be looked at. Efficiency is what Jonah is trying to explain to Alex. Jonah went on to say that only the tasks directly associated to the throughput of production has to operate efficiently. Alex used robots and Jonah still kept constantly questioning why robots? It was not until Alex closely examined the situation that Alex discovered that management was operating less efficiently. The extra costs were a total actual waste. Closer investigating, Alex found out that only the operations required to produce the finished products are key to get the ultimate efficient rate needed.
Scott Zesch graduated from Harvard Law School, and Texas A&M University. Mr. Zesch is a winner of the Western History Associations Ray Allen Billington Award, as well as of the Biennical TCU Texas Book award for the best book published in 2003 or 2004. Scott Zesch has also written other books other than "The Captured" including " The Chinatown War" and " Alamo Heights". Mr. Zesch wrote "The Captured" because when Zesch found out that he had a great uncle named Adolph Korn who had been abducted by Indians, he was determined to find out more about this abduction. When he did, Zesch decided to write a book explaining who his great uncle was, how he came to know about this abduction and the events taken place throughout this incident. Zesch wanted his book to be represent a synthesis of sources that are trustworthy. With that said Zesch focused mainly on the German children who were abducted. Throughout the book the feel of
I sat in my child development class in a “brick and mortar” classroom setting. What was I doing there? I was extremely interested in what the professor was speaking on and what was being discussed. However, I was beginning to doubt whether I wanted to continue in my current field of study, Speech/Language Pathology. I no longer felt I was being fulfilled. There was something lacking. I talked to a few of my friends who mentioned how much money I would make as a Speech/Language Pathologist. I heard what they were saying, but somehow it just did not matter. I had to find the missing link…….
The heart of this story is based around the life of Alex Rogo, Plant Manager for
This let to inefficiencies, because Ted failed to establish the good relationship and respect for the suppliers, and they were reluctant to work with
“The Goal” is a book talking about challenges and problems that can face any plant manager. The story style used was very useful. I enjoyed the reading and gain more knowledge about the manufacturing operation. Many concepts and definitions were introduced such as the goal of any company and the its three measurements which are throughput, inventory and exponential expenses. Also, bottleneck and non-bottleneck resources.
Sam Lowry’s world is made up of millions upon millions of machines, upon which everyone relies to survive. Machines perform basically every task that there is, from the most mundane task such as creating food, to the most complex and important tasks such as deciding the fate of every living person within the system. When we first meet Sam his alarm clock is not working, the phone is large and hard to work, and the food that his machines make is completely inedible. This does not bode well for the people, for if the machines cannot even handle the most basic of tasks, how could they possibly handle the complex ones? We are taken further into the world of faults and failings within the system later on, when Sam has major problems with his heating ...
This company manufactures tables and cabinets to hold microwave ovens and portable televisions. Looking at the data, it is apparent that there are ways to make this company more efficient in their manufacturing processes while looking at the overtime hours involved in the operations. Most of this companies products follow the very same assembly and production lines with the difference being that the Saturn microwave stand and the Gemini TV stand both contain a part refered to as 3079 which requires a special lathe in the production phase. This lathe requires a highly train...
The new president believes that the key to the new strategy is to be able to understand the true nature (i.e. costs) of customers and orders. He feels that if the company is able to tie costs o customers in an accurate manner, it will enable the company to better focus on higher profitability.
... Chet, as Plant Manager, to operate more efficiently, the change must be implemented to empower employees to make their own decisions and feel confident in doing their work without constant assurance. Every employee and supervisor must be retrained so they are clear on their job description and their responsibilities. Chet will have more time to work on his own projects and feel like an effective Plant Manager at the end of each workday. This change will increase the plant's productivity and the entire staff's satisfaction and development. The important part of instilling the change is to make it transparent to all the members of the organization, ensure they embrace the change, offer and receive frequent feedback from employees, practice effective communication to all the members, and conduct performance appraisals to ensure productivity is meeting company standards.
In order for a company to push its improvement and create a balanced plant, it is necessary to increase the throughput, while reducing inventory an operating expense. But, what is most important is to identify the bottlenecks to be able to focus on them. After focusing and solving the constraints, everything else is going to be less powerful but important at the same time.