The Goal Book Report

“The Goal” by Eliyahu Goldratt, is described by its back cover as being one of the most important business books ever written. First published in 1984, The Goal introduced the theory of constraints to the business world through the use of a fictional manufacturing plant. This fictional manufacturing plant, managed by Alex Rogo, demonstrates how large and complex systems can be limited in achieving their goals by a small number of constraints, or bottlenecks as the book calls them. In other words, the system as a whole is only as fast as its slowest part. “A chain is no stronger than its weakest link.” () This idiom is a simple foundation of the theory of constraints as described in the book. The theory of constraints allows a manager to identify the part of the process that is slowing or holding back the whole system. By focusing on the weakest link(s), the manager can then manage and improve the constraint so it is not slowing down the rest of the process. As studied in class, tasks on the critical path are dependent on each other, so finding and managing the slowest task is critical to improving upon the efficiency of the whole system. Operations management is mainly concerned with managing the process that converts inputs (in …show more content…
Every action taken stems from that single fact, so tracing the problem back to a policy or procedure that is causing the issue is incredibly important. Once a manager has identified the cause/effect situation that is causing the issue, he should assemble a competent team of critical thinkers to evaluate ‘what to change to’. Determining ‘how to cause that change’ requires the manager to employ a different way of thinking in order to come up with an innovative