the_goal
by Eliyahu Goldratt
thoughts by Gavin
I like the idea that people should try to "work smart" instead of "work hard". The idea that managers should be giving employees work to occupy their time on the job is a bad idea. It is much better if the managers understand the goal ("cutomer needs" or "jobs to be done") and plan out work which helps accomplish the goal.
Introduction
Science for me, and for the vast majority of respectable scientists, is not about the secrets of nature or even about truths. Science is imply the method we use to try and postulate a minimum set of assumptions that can explain, through a straightforward logical derivation, the existence of many phenomena of nature.
This book is an attempt to show that we can postulate a very small number of assumptions and utilize them to explain a very large spectrum of industrial phenomena.
Presenting us with final conclusions is not a way that we learn. At best it is a way that we are trained. That's why I tried to deliver the message contained in the book in the Socratic way.
Our textbooks should not present us with a series of end results but rather a plot that enables the reader to go through the deduction process himself.
Introduction to the First Edition
Knowledge should be pursued, I believe, to make our world better - to make life more fulfilling.
I also hope that readers would see the validity and value of these principles in other organizations such as banks, hospitals, insurance companies and our families. Maybe the same potential for growth and improvement exists in all organizations.
The key ingredient is to have the courage to face inconsistencies between what we see and deduce and the way things are done. This challenging of basic assumptions is essential to breakthroughs.
Progress in understanding requires that we challenge basic assumptions about how the world is and why it is that way. If we can better understand our world and the principles that govern it, I suspect all our lives will be better.
Chapter 3
What makes me mad sometimes is that I'm always running so hard that - like most other people, I guess - I don't have time to pay attention to all the daily miracles going on around me. Instead of letting my eyes drink in the dawn, I'm watching the road and worrying about Peach.
Chapter 4
What I'm telling you is, productivity is meaningless unless you know what your goal is.
Chapter 5
The goal of a manufacturing organization is to make money.
If the goal is to make money, then (putting it in terms Jonah might have used), an action that moves us toward making money is productive. And an action that takes away from making money is non-productive.
Chapter 8
"They're measurements which express the goal of making money perfectly well, but which also permit you to develop operational rules for running your plant," he says. "There are three of them. Their names are throughput, inventory and operational expense."
"Throughput," he says, "is the rate at which the system generates money through sales."
"These definitions, even though they may sound simple, are worded very precisely. And they should be; a measurement not clearly defined is worse than useless. ..."
"Inventory is all the money that the system has invested in purchasing things which it intends to sell."
"Operational expense is all the money the system spends in order to turn inventory into throughput."
Chapter 9
Increase throughput while simultaneously reducing both inventory and operating expense.
Chapter 33
Information is the answer to the question asked.
Chapter 35
Sacrates' dialogues actually were written by this pupil, Plato.
Chapter 40
'what to change?', 'what to change to?', and 'how to cause the change?'