The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt (Essay Sample)

Surname Instructor Course Date The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt Eliyahu in this book “The Goal” narrates about a plant manager called Alex Rogo who tries all ways to save his plant by implementing a 90-day strategy to improve its efficiency and increase output. The major problem he faces is lack of efficiency in terms of quality and time needed to produce the products. All his competitors are producing more effectively and hence making his situation worse off. He is faced with a situation where the owners of the plant might decide to close it down if it does not improve its performance. Jonah a physician helps him save the plant by helping him achieve his objectives. The main objective now was to try to increase the efficiency of the plant and capacity of the constraint points to increase the throughput or the output of the plant. When this was achieved, the plant was performing at full capacity and thus all resources utilized optimally. The manufacturing role of all businesses is to make money. It is not any different with this case and Alex with Jonah’s help they are able to measure the parameters that contribute to this role. The parameters are stock throughput, inventory, and operational expense. Stock throughput is the generation of money though sales, inventory is the cost of raw materials, and operational expenses are the costs incurred in transformation of raw materials to stock throughput. In light of this, they discovered that the goal of any organization is to increase the throughput while reducing or minimizing both inventory and operational expenses. In trying to solve the problems, Jonah introduces the theory of constraints. This theory has the following parameters; Constraints identification, Constraint exploitation, Constraint elevation, In addition, repeat the same process in cases where intended results are not achieved. The main question is what and how to effect the proposed changes. This theory of constraints is used by Alex to find the changes needed in his plant. When Alex and Jonah first met at O’Hare airport, they were talking about the impact of introduction of robots to the plant and their impact. Jonah realized that the robots were working in non-bottleneck processes. He insisted that adding robots in non-bottleneck processes to a system in which bottleneck processes are present do not help increase overall productivity. Alex had to locate the bottlenecks in the plant operation and try to reduce or eliminate them. This would lead to a smooth flow of materials and hence reducing inventory, work in progress, and operational expenses. This would mean that the throughput would increase and thus more profits. When a system includes dependent events, it has limited capacity to perform and especially when the parameters were not defined. Alex and his employees found two bottlenecks in their system i.e. the NCX -10 machine and the heat-treat. In order to achieve his goals he had to focus on the constraints. The solutions to these constraints were to be identified and solved successfully. The goal was to make sure that the bottleneck’s time was not wasted. This time saving must also contribute to daily throughput. The realization that running non-bottleneck components led to excess of demand in the inventory led to an increased efficiency test. The materials were released faster than the rate at which the bottlenecks could process. They realized when all processes in the organization were working fast enough they would breakeven. Therefore, they wanted to ensure that all processes were fast and efficient without reducing the product quality. With the use of the proposed mechanisms, the team started to implement it in the plant. The concept of constraints in this book is explained by an example. Alex took a group of boys to a hike. The slowest boy, Herbie has characteristics similar to those of a constraint. Due to his slow nature, keeping the boys in line becomes a challenging task for Alex. In the line boys in front of Herbie hike faster and thus a big gap between them and Herbie is created. In this experience, Alex discovers some simple logic. Using this logic, he plans to turn his plants fortune by eliminating any constraints in the system. Statistical fluctuations and dependable events concept is evident here. Statistical fluctuation means that factors critical to operation of a production unit cannot be determined in advance. In the case of a process, related operation like a plant ant slow process slows the whole plant. In the case of Alex the processes that required improvement were the once that were taking more time than the other machines. This was evident in the pile up of stock in front of NCX-10 machine and the heat-treat machines. Although other processes could produce efficiently an...