Never Give Up: Review of 'The Goal' by Eliyahu Goldratt

In Never Give Up essay I am going to summarise and review the book ‘The Goal’ is centered on Alex Rogo, who is a manager at one of the UniCo plants.  This book explains the path that Alex has to take in order to prevent his plant from closing down in 3 months and the lessons that he learnt along the way. The lessons that I have taken and summarised can be used for any organisation.

Lesson 1- Know the goal of your company

Alex found out that the goal of the company was to make money and not one of the many others such as cost-effectiveness, having the right employees and latest technology. Alex learns this after he speaks to Jonah, who was his professor in college. (Cox, 2016)

This lesson was brought up early on in the book, when Alex was given 3 months to sort out the plant or it would be shut down. In chapter 4, while Alex is in a meeting with Bill Peach he remembers a conversation that he had with Jonah just before he could catch a flight. Jonah leaves Alex with a question, what is the ultimate goal of his company and not just the plant? Alex finds out the goal of his company and the plant is to make more money and all the other activities are a way in which to reach or achieve the main goal.

Lesson 2 – Increase throughput while simultaneously reducing both inventory and operating expenses

Jonah, Alex’s college professor helps Alex to arrange the organisation to the man goal of the company by differentiating between the 3 operational measurements:

• Throughput is the rate at which the systems makes money through sales.
• Inventory is all the money that the company has invested in things which they want to sell. Inventory can also include property, equipment and staff.
• Operating expenses is all the money that operation spend in order to turn inventory into goods and services.

Lesson 3 – Find the dependent events and statistical fluctuations

A dependent event is a series of events that must happen before another begins. Statistical fluctuations are the length of the event and the outcomes which are not yet fully known. Alex was able to work through this when he was on the camping trip and hike with his son Dave. He realises that it is very difficult to makeup the downside of the fluctuations that are following dependent events. It is extremely hard for the last event to catch up in order for it to average out. Alex also explains this theory to his team by making use of a very late order. He shows them that if the demand is 100 pieces and they have determined that the quota needs to be 25 pieces per hour and this order needs to be done by a certain time. They cannot fall behind when producing these pieces because if they do they will not meet their deadline.

Lesson 4 – Bottleneck resources

A bottleneck is any resource whose capacity is equal to or less than the demand placed on it. Jonah explained to Alex that a bottleneck is not either good or bad, it just is and is part of reality. What he meant was that if a company where to have them, they must know exactly how to use them to control the flow into the system and the market. A company does not have to make use of non-bottleneck resources, they can just leave them idle.

Lesson 5 – Seek out answers to your questions

Your need to ask question if you don’t understand something. We see in this book that at first Alex did not understand the main goal of his company. So in order to understand he asked a lot of questions and he came to the conclusion that the main goal of the company is to make more money. We also see it when Jonah outline the how to manage constraints which is the Theory of Constraint by asking a few simple questions. The answer that he received create the five steps to improve the performance of any system (POOGI or Process of On-Going Improvement). The 5 steps are:

• Identify the systems constraints
• Decide how to exploit the system’s constraints
• Subordinate everything else to the above decision
• Evaluate the system’s constraints
• If the previous steps a constraint has been Broken, go back to step 1, but don’t allow inertia to cause a systems constrain taint

Lesson 6 - Never give up

Throughout the book Alex is given many chances to give up but he chose to persevere. Alex was given 3 months in order to turn his plant around or it would have been shut down. He could have left the plant a found another job just like his wife Julie wanted him to do, but he decided to stay and fight for his plant. Alex sort help from Jonah, his college professor, who helped him understand the plant better so that he could fix most of the problems so that the plant could become profitable. The lesson that I learned here is that you should never give up as long as there is a chance. The battle if only lost when you give up.

Lesson 7 - Team work

In order for Alex to save his plant, he had to work with a team which consisted of Bob from production, Lou from accounting and Stacey from inventory control. Alex saw that they each helped each other to understand the problems of the plant and how to fix those problems. Meaning that more heads are better than one. Alex saw that if they did not understand a concept or explanation they would ask each other questions to come to a common understanding. Like when Alex was having a meeting with them about the goal of the company. And when he has an understanding about dependent events and statistical fluctuations. The team does not understand him fully so the was able how these principles apply when they were completing a large order that was overdue.

Conclusion

In conclusion to essay about never giving up through setting goals I have learnt 7 important lessons which Eliyahu Goldratt highlights throughout the book. This book shows me that in order for you to achieve a goal you need to know exactly what that goal is and define it so that others will understand it as well. It show that you need to question everything that is happening in your operation in order for you to make the correct improvements where necessary. And you must never give up if there is still a chance. Writing essay about never give up can boost your motivation to set your goals properly and achieve them in a right way.

Bibliography

• Cox, E. M. G. a. J., 2016. The Goal. 3rd ed. New York: Routeledge.