| | Luke, I finished the book, taking five pages of notes. I re-wrote his final conclusions in my own terminology. The last quarter of the book required some diligence as the message began to wear thin. Sadly, the goal of the Avraham Goldratt Foundation was to disseminate knowledge, rather than to make money, even though every organization -- every business, certainly -- exists to make money, according to Eliyahu Goldratt.
The ideas presented are good and useful, as much so as the other "silver bullets" sold by Tom Peters and others during the same timeframe for quality, involvement, etc., etc. The book could have been written in such a way, say from Tom Peters' viewpoint, that the solutions to the bottlenecks, etc., are attributed to the miracle of total quality improvement via employee involvement defined by a mission statement.
I was also disappointed that more was not made of Julie's discovery of philosophy or Alex's discovery of physics. They almost had a conversation that nearly brought the two threads together... but, no...
Another disappointment was the failure of Al and Lou to find more general solutions (heuristics) in the five bullet points that defined their initial solution set. So, I did that.
If the constraint is a policy, the boys are stumped. They know no way to exploit it, to elevate it, and to subordinate everything else to it. To me, a policy exists for a reason, albeit one based on a false premise or a changed condition, so to "elevate the bottleneck (constraint)" means to identify and elevate the reason for the policy. In other words, the original NCX-10 numerical control machine that was the bottleneck when the story opened existed to mill parts. They did not argue about the actual design of the machine, but accepted its function. So, too, when they supplemented it -- elevated it -- by bringing in older equipment to complete the same tasks, does that translate to finding the procedures (policies, business rules) that used to work before the current ones that do not were implemented -- and therefore to identify (elevate) the problem that these policies old and new were intended to fix.
Having had a couple of introductory classes in accounting, I was disappointed, also, in the lack of alternative measures. Goldblatt finds fault with the existing ones, but his accountant character never comes back with a solution set, though, clearly, such must exist. I know little about accounting, but I do know that GAAP just satisfies the government and most companies have two or more sets of books so that they know what is really happening. I was more than happy to bring away the new perception that inventory is not an asset, but an expense.
As most people here have not read the book, and are not likely to, all of that is to say that I found it valuable, but incomplete. The Goal is well worth the time invested.
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