The Goal (novel)

Setting

Like other books by Goldratt and Cox, The Goal is written as fiction. The main character is Alex Rogo, who manages a production plant with an uncertain future. Bill Peach, a company executive, tells Alex that he has three months to turn operations at his plant around from being unprofitable and unreliable to being successful. Jonah, a physicist, whom many believe represents Goldratt himself, helps him solve the company's problems through a series of telephone calls and brief meetings wherein he explains many fundamental business concepts. A second story line is introduced about Alex's marital life.

Bottlenecks

The book points out the role of bottlenecks (constraints) in a manufacturing process, and how identifying them not only makes it possible to reduce their impact, but also yields a useful tool for measuring and controlling the flow of materials. Alex and his team identify the bottlenecks in their process and immediately begin to implement changes to help increase capacity and speed up production. In response to questions about the logic of using outdated technology in modern manufacturing, Alex's team brought in an old machine they received for free (which had previously been used at their plant in conjunction with two other machines) in order to increase the capacity of the NCX-10 machine, which was identified as one of the two bottlenecks. Furthermore, they identified processes at the heat treat, identified as their second bottleneck, which caused massive delays in them getting product through the heat treat and which had caused some products to be heat-treated multiple times (to make softer and then harder again) instead of only once or not at all.

Socratic method

In the book, Jonah teaches Alex Rogo by using the Socratic method. Throughout the book, whenever a meeting or telephone call dialogue involves Jonah, he poses a question to Alex or a member of his crew, in turn causing them to talk amongst themselves to come up with a solution to their problem. When Alex is with his wife, he finds the Socratic method as a way to fix his marriage, which he uses with his crew, to come up with the five steps they should use to fix problems in the plant. Eventually it leads him and Lou to find the three things every division manager, the position to which Alex is promoted, should be able to find.

Characters

• Alex Rogo – main character, manufacturing plant manager, hero of the story
• Bill Peach – division vice-president
• Fran – Alex's secretary
• Jonah – advisor, Alex's former physics professor
• Lou – chief accountant / plant controller
• Stacey – inventory manager
• Julie Rogo – Alex Rogo's wife
• Bob Donovan – production manager
• Ralph Nakamura – data processing manager
• Herbie – the bottleneck and the solution
• Dave – Alex Rogo's son
• Sharon – Alex Rogo's daughter
• Mike O'Donnel – union rep
• Ethan Frost – division controller
• Johnny Jons – marketing director / sales manager
• Hilton Smyth – assistant division controller
• Bucky Burnside – president of UniCo's biggest customer

References

Editions

References

1. "Jeff Cox".
2. [https://www.routledge.com/products/9780566086656 A summary of ''The Goal'' by Gower Publishing]
3. Rawlings, Nate. (2011-08-09). "The 25 Most Influential Business Management Books". Time.
4. Stevenson, Seth. (2012-06-08). "Then Why Did We Buy the NCX-10?". Slate.