The Goal

In 1984, my biggest concerns were getting my homework done, playing music, going on a bike ride, and girls. I had no interest in “business”. I had an inquisitive mind and loved numbers and math, but I was also very idealistic. To my teenage sized responsibilities and sensibilities, “business” was about money and greed, and I wanted none of it. I was not opposed to working and making money, and spending it. But I liked things on a micro scale, rather than on a macro corporate machine level, where white men would scheme and devise ways of sucking the life out of the human soul so that they could get filthy rich and buy themselves a new yacht.

This would have certainly been a factor in my ignorance of the work of Eliyahu M. Goldratt. That same year, Mr. Goldratt published “The Goal“, recognized as “one of the most important business books ever published!” (* from the back cover of book).

The book is about a factory, and the fact that it is about to be shut down in only 3 months unless the workers can find a way to make the factory sustainably profitable. The book is also about the protagonist’s relationship troubles with his wife. Things end well in the book (no spoilers here, I think). In approaching both aspects of the story, Mr. Godratt takes a scientific approach to look at the facts and relates a courageous and natural thought process which inevitably leads to improvements. His analogies and examples are spot on, and ingenious.

Chapter 13 discusses the protagonist’s hike with a bunch of young scouts (one of them being his son), along a single file line through the woods for hours on end to reach a camping location for the evening. Through astute observation, the story shows simply that:

1. The pace of the work for the group of scouts (walking) is limited by the bottle neck, i.e. the slowest hiker
2. Inefficiencies (slow downs) are accumulative
3. Due to dependent events (scouts following each other) each person is always limited by the person in front of them

The protagonist thinks about this, and throughout the remainder of the book considers how these points can be applied to observing and analyzing relationships and business/manufacturing processes, then takes it many steps further towards successful resolutions. In the analogy, each scout is a step in a process: the process of walking. Mr. Goldratt is able to relate this directly to concepts of inventory, work processes, and operational costs. Without these analogies and thought exercises, the story would not be able to lead to eventual non-intuitive ideas, such as the fact that idle-work time sometimes is the most efficient course of action to achieve optimal throughput (depending, of course, on the specifics of the value chain under analysis).

I only recently read The Goal. Now that I am (a little bit) older and have (mostly) shed my teenage outlook, I appreciate and understand how the story of this book can be applied to just about anything. As humans, we are creating things all the time, with our co-workers, with our families, on our own. The Goal shows that with some focused thought and “situational awareness”, any process can be improved. This book is one of many publications that fit squarely in the path of Agile and Lean thought and improvement methodologies, as well as more subjective and personal endeavors such as relationships and working as a team towards a common goal.

FYI, I do not own or plan to own a yacht.