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Summary: A novel about manufacturing and the Theory of Constraints
Review: This book was one of the recommended supplementary readings for a course on Cost Accounting I took during my MBA studies at the University of Michigan Business School. As everyone points out, this is written as a novel and therefore dresses up its points and teaches through the story of a manger of a failing manufacturing plant and a workaholic also failing in marriage.You can guess that the protagonist learns / discovers Goldratt's Theory of Constraints and everything in his life turns around. Even though all this is obvious, it is a decent read and although much of it has aged (smoking and drinking at work, not many women in the workplace, no cell phones, etc), and even though other ideas have come along developing or moving past TOC, it still is an important source text. If you are interested in manufacturing and the ideas that have affected manufacturing for the past decade and a half, this book is a must read. The basic notion is that traditional cost accounting measures can distort and therefore misrepresent costs and therefore cause behavior to work against firm profitability. The TOC basically treats all costs as fixed (in the short term) and forces managers to think through and re-design their system for maximum throughput. This is a good book, a good text, and an important historical document of the mid-eighties that still has influence today. If you haven't read it, hey, it's still new, right? You'll be glad you read it even if you adopt some other manufacturing point of view. At least you will be better prepared to discuss TOC when it comes up in conversation with other manufacturing / cost accounting types.
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Summary: Good information, but wordy
Review: This was an interesting and engaging read. The focus is to show how to improve throughput of products to customers versus focusing on improving efficiency as a way to business success. It touches on the concepts of lean manufacturing (try "Lean Thinking" - an excellent book). The ideas are great, but wrapping them up in the life story of the plant manager is a mixed blessing. It moves the story along, but the subplot of his rocky marriage is tedious and takes focus away from the main point of the book. The anecdotal nature of the book also clouds some key points.
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Summary: In manufacturing???>>>>Read this book!!
Review: If you are in manufacturing, you really must read this book. The book is written as a novel, but it really is a textbook in disguise. The concepts of bottlenecks, batch sizes, line balances and throughput are all subliminally taught to the reader in the form of a story. The only weakness of the book that I can find is that the story side of things really can get to be a bit much at times. The lead character is going through a messy marriage (sound familiar??), and unfortunately The Goal does dwell on this a bit too long for my liking. Anyway, this is an easy read and gives a good balanced perspective on factory management. Enjoy.
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Summary: Easy and Interesting Read
Review: I was asked to read this book as part of a graduate level operations management class I am taking for my MBA. At first I thought how good could this book possibly be? But much to my surprise it was very good, because of the author's ability to weave a story around among other things, the principles of production and capacity planning. Pretty dull stuff wrapped up in the form of a fast moving, interesting story that can apply to any manufacturing company.
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Summary: Great for Ops
Review: Bottleneck. Lead Time. Throughput. These are terms that you're probably familiar if you work in operations, or are studying it. This book makes those terms and many others come to life. Highly recommended for students and those who are constantly seeking to improve themselves. PS: Jonah was right about The Goal!!!
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Summary: Fascinating
Review: I just read the book from cover to cover last night. Odd that a book covering manufacturing plant management should be so gripping but it was! It is rare to find such a book in 'novel' format, but Goldratt has managed it, and managed it well. By forcing the main character to work through his plant management issues rather than simply spouting advice, you get a better understanding of the thought process behind his Theory of Constraints while simultaneously being absorbed in the storyline wanting to see the 'hero' persevere and win through his troubles. By engaging several other people in his plant, we are simultanteously shown alternative perspectives on plant dynamics that brings a clearer picture of the problems being tackled, especially to someone with limited experience in the field. Throughout the book the examples are kept relatively simple, and jargon free, which was a refreshingly down-to-earth presentation of management principles which can doubltess be applied to many other scenarios far beyond a manufacturing plant.
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Summary: Great introduction to the Theory of Constraints
Review: I will admit I was skeptical when I started The Goal. As a novel it's not bad, but the point is that this is not a novel about business, it's a business book in the form of a novel. Goldratt's biggest strength as a writer showed when he explained his theories by using easy to understand examples. Using the marching Boy Scouts to explain not only what a bottleneck is, but also what the implications of a bottleneck are, was great. The exchanges between Jonah and Alex were similarly enlightening. There really are not too many negatives about this book. Just don't have too many expectations for this book as a novel (Goldratt is not the John Grisham or Tom Clancy of Operations Management). The ending was a little bit awkward too ... it's like Goldratt wanted to tackle the whole issue of divisional management but settled for a brief introduction to it instead. I'm not familiar with his other books, but I hope he went into this topic into a little more depth somewhere: it would be interesting to read his theories on managing above the single-plant level. To sum up, "The Goal" is a great book for anyone interested in business in general, operations management and the Theory of Constraints in particular. A lot of his advice is common sense, which he admits, but that's the point: business is about setting a goal and running operations with that goal in mind. Don't let some of the more conventional measurements (cost and efficiency measurements in particular) distract you from that.
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Summary: A 150-page text squeezed into a 300-page novel.
Review: In "The Goal," Eliyahu Goldratt has written what has to be one of the most-read business books in existance. It's an introduction to his "Theory of Constraints" (TOC), but it's presented in a radically different form than the traditional business book. Most business books are either substantial, yet dry, text books or more engaging, but less substantive, anecdote-filled treatises. "The Goal" is a novel. About a Plant Manager. Who learns about the Theory of Constraints. While saving his plant. Sounds electrifying, huh? My first reaction when I heard about it was: "A novel about a plant manager? And people actually paid money and read this?" Part of me wanted to read it for the sheer novelty of it. And part of me was interested in some of the buzz I'd heard about TOC. And here's the weird part; the book actually works. It's engaging, particularly if you've ever worked in or around a plant (and know how intimately your personal success is tied to the success of nebulous factors that no one seems to understand). It gradually introduces you to the concepts of TOC in a way that gives you a decent handle on them without mining them to the point of mind-numbing boredom. What is TOC? Well, without re-writing the book here, it's about changing the focus of the organization to understand that the overall flow of work is more important to the success of the organization than the contribution of single parts. That is, managing the manufacturing capacity of the process is more important than ensuring that each manufacturing machine is producing at optimal capacity. In this sense, it's a lot like mathematical optimization, but TOC presents this in a fashion that's much more intuitive (it almost kills me to say that, as I spent a lot of my life gathering math degrees). If you're interested, Goldratt explains all of this in a much shorter book, The Theory of Constraints; however, it's much less interesting than The Goal. And as it basically covers the same information, I'd recommend The Goal before The Theory of Constraints. There are no explosions. No one dies, and there are no conspiracies. At the end of the story, the hero (Alex Roge) doesn't end up in a nail-biting shootout with the enemy (although that might be a nice touch). It's a simple manufacturing plant in a company town that's doomed to extinction (the town and the plant), if things don't improve and improve quickly. And you find yourself pulling for Alex and his team as they honestly try to save the company and the town. As a novelist, Goldratt will certainly never be mentioned in the same breath as Hemingway or Steinbeck. But don't sell the book short; it communicates a fundamentally different business point of view in a quick and effective fashion. And it does it in a way that has the reader anticipating the next development, rather than having to force themselves to slog from chapter to chapter. In the end, I'm glad I read it, and I recommend it highly. Now if he could just turn Alex into an action hero for the sequel...
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Summary: Great for Distribution and Logistics Managers.
Review: As an Operations Manager in a distribution facility I found many parallels that help me to keep the product moving. I am amazed at how we ignore the core problems and constraints and continually generate work-a-rounds. This book is an interesting and thought provoking avenue to improvements in all areas of the Distribution Center. I could not put it down.
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Summary: it's really the only GOAL!
Review: "The Goal" by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. The Goal is a manufacturing novel, about a plant manager who is trying to figure out ways to run his plant better so that it can stay open. As a novel, it may not win a Nobel prize for literature, but as a way of putting some manufacturing ideas into understandable terminology, it does very well.
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