Goal: By Goldratt Science Is

Goal: By Goldratt Science is Not Limited to Math and Physics and Biology When he wrote his book, Eliyahu M. Goldratt, the author of the Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, was clearly out to show the reader that "science" is more than just physics, math, and biology. And in fact his point is that there is a kind of science in the study of factories, and any "new science" can be developed through a logical construction of looking at the world in an original way.

Instead of doing things the way they were "always done" in the past (Goldratt writes in his "Introduction to the Revised Edition"), the author urges readers to understand that science has been in the "ivory tower of academia" but it really belongs "within reach" of ordinary people as well.

And true science is not tied in all cases to "brainpower," Goldratt asserts; rather, it is found in logic based on "what we see." The key to developing a new way of looking at factories, for example, is in having "the courage to face inconsistencies between what we see and deduce and the way things are done." Introduction The nature of the problem presented in this book is that there are better ways to define "productivity" than simply getting things done, and also, there are more efficient ways in which to run a factory than the traditional ways shown in the story.

The problem is inefficiency, really, and how to become more efficient. On pages 14-16, the author's company is rushing out an order at great payroll expense - and he (17) writes that he has a manufacturing plant "on the critical list." it's going down the tubes in three months unless the narrator (plant manager) can come up with a solution. The purpose and significance of this book has everything to do with throwing out old, out-dated ideas of manufacturing (production), and listening to new ideas.

On page 65, the author is staying briefly at his mother's house in order to be closer to his old friend Jonah, something of a guru on business, production, and leadership. He doesn't go see his mother that often because his wife doesn't like going there, but this is a sign that he is desperate for some advice from Jonah.

The conversation the narrator has with his mother (65) is a huge statement as to what this book entails philosophically: "Alex, what's wrong?" she asks, and it may as well be the reader asking the narrator what is wrong with his manufacturing plant. "Come on, you can tell me. I know something's wrong.

You show up out of the blue on my doorstep, you're calling people all over the place in the middle of the night..." See Mom, the plant isn't doing so well...and, ah...well, we're not making any money." Your big plant not making any money?" she asks. "Don't those robot things work?" Two key points in this book are illustrated in Alex's mom's dialogue: just because a plant is "big," and just because it has introduced robots for presumed efficiency, doesn't mean that things are going smoothly.

It doesn't necessarily indicate that the human side of the operation has solved the problems related to production and payroll and the bottom line. Appearances are sometimes deceiving, and the author's point about a new way to look at science is brought to the reader in various and interesting analogies and metaphors.

For example, Alex's mother (65) wonders why the board member named Granby wants to have his picture taken with "a bunch of robots who don't even have faces..." The Body of the Paper What the author is doing, in a very clever yet practical way, is introducing readers to a new way of thinking, based on the protagonist's frustrations over his failing factory. Granted, the problems that Alex is having with employees, management, production, and a failing bottom line are not unique to his situation.

But it's not whether the problems are universal or unique that makes this book readable and interesting; it is what is done about it, that makes it a learning experience to read through the book. On pages 60-61, Jonah advises Alex as to what specific aspects of his plant should be evaluated.

This is the series of business issues that Alex has been seeking, because he knows he is floundering with out-dated systems of analysis, and he only has a few months to turn his manufacturing plant around, before it is shut down. Jonah defines the three as "measurements which express the goal of making money...but which also permit you to develop operational rules for running your plant." The three are throughput, operational expense, and inventory.

Jonah says they are "worded very precisely," and that in fact, these measurements when "not clearly defined" are "worse than useless." Throughput" is the "rate at which the system generates money through sales," Jonah instructs. He goes on to clarify that if the product is not sold, it's not throughput.

And the next measurement on page 60 is inventory, which is "all the money that the system has invested in purchasing things which it intends to sell." Meanwhile, "operational expense" is all the money spent by the company on the process of turning inventory into "throughput." At this stage in Alex's learning curve, his mentor explains that the value added to product because of labor costs should not be factored in, because there will always be confusion over where money spent (on labor, for example) is an "investment or an expense." All of this new knowledge and these new strategies Alex has acquired will do no good if he can't implement them into the scheme of his factory.

And this portion of the book is a good analogy for any reader who has management responsibilities and thinks new ideas are easy to sell to employees.

Alex has "invested a couple hours" in the process of explaining Jonah's ideas to his senior staff, but they are just sit there "unimpressed." Alex can clearly see that they "don't know what to make of what I've told them." Meanwhile, on page 125, readers know that Alex's personal life is coming apart at the seams, and extremely stressful (on 130 Alex thinks about his marriage and is "mad as Hell" that Julie "took off"...but what can he do? "I can't cruise the streets looking for her."), which adds exponentially to the ongoing and growing pressure of his professional life.

Hilton Smyth has called (he is the man now in charge of badgering plant managers to get production into high gear), and when Alex calls him back, Hilton is pushy and threatens Alex's job security by demanding that an order be sent to Hilton's plant by day's end, or else. Things are improving in Alex's world - both with his relationship with his wife Julie and his professional world - as the book continues into Chapter 27.

But the author at this point is using Alex's challenging relationship with his wife as an allegory for the whole point of the book, which is "the goal" for better solutions to issues and problems. On page 226, Alex and Julie are discussing their marriage, and Julie asks, "Why do you feel compelled to work twenty-four hours a day?" There is silence, but Alex says that asking questions (as he himself did of Jonah) is a good thing.

Meanwhile, Alex says that his idea of "the goal of a marriage is not living in a perfect house where everything happens according to a clock..." Julie also invokes the book's title, asking, "...what's all this about a goal? When you're married, you're just married. There is no goal." And in order to throw in some irony (227), Alex states that Julie should think about their marriage "logically" (the way in which he has been trying to look at his management position at the plant).

And while looking at it logically, she should also "throw away for the moment all the pre-conceptions we have about our marriage, and just take a look at how we are right now." That is what Jonah basically said to Alex; to throw away all preconceptions about running a manufacturing plant and look at where he was right then.

So the author is reminding readers through the sub-plot of the story, Alex's marriage, that there has to be a new way of looking at things in order for positive change to take place. Jonah comes back into the picture in Chapter 28, suggesting the plant cut batch sizes in half on "non-bottlenecks." Basically, that advice will lead to needing "half the work-in-process" on the floor and basically the investment would also be cut in half, reducing the pressure on the cash-flow situation for the company.

The learning curve for Alex here is in time management: the total time involved in getting the material inside the plant until sending it out the door as a finished produce is chopped into four elements. One is "setup" time; and the second is process time (allowing for the time that piece spends being changed into a more valuable form).

The third is "queue time" ("the time the part spends in line for a resource while the resource is busy working on something else ahead of it"); and four is "wait time" (the time any part waits "for another part so they can be assembled together). What Jonah also made clear to Alex is that the old formula ("economical batch quantity" - EBQ) has "a number of flawed assumptions underlying it (232). And therefore, by using the newer strategy - of reducing batch sizes by 50 per cent - it has.