The Goal

The Goal is primarily a technical book about the Theory Of Constraint well-known in large-scale manufacturing processes with the goal of making money out of production lines. Since the dry theory is nestled into a career crisis story of a plant manager named Alex Rogo (how he mobilizes his people and races against time to save his plant from low productivity and late shipment records while trying to balance his personal life), the author makes the TOC understandable to any audience with an interest in the area of manufacturing.

Personally, I found a lot of insights from Alex’s story on how to identify bottlenecks on the production line, how to logically increase the qualified product output going through the bottlenecks, how to estimate the financial loss cost by the bottlenecks correctly, etc. “A lost production hour on a bottleneck is equal to the lost in one hour of the entire plan because the bottleneck defines the maximum speed at which products can be produced” is one of many enlightening lessons I learned from the book. Quite insightful, isn’t it?

The book also narrates the story of Alex realizing the ultimate goal of his plant (making money instead of cost-effective purchasing), thus completely altering his approach to the production. I think the story is a thrilling sprint against time to save a plant (or fail and see his plant completely shut down).

The length of the book is perhaps what I don’t really like. I think the book could be shortened relative to the amount of information it conveys.

One last piece of information is that The Goal is a must-read book required by Jeff Bezo to his top management, and a framework for Amazon. Hey, that tells a bit about the value of the book.