Essay on Review of "The Goal" by Eliyahu Goldratt

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt is about a plant manager named Alex Rogo and his quest of knowledge to make his company profitable again. Alex does this while battling family issues at home with his wife. In the beginning, Alex has no idea where he is going to start or even understand why they are losing money. Everything that he reads according to the numbers of the company says that he is running a very efficient company.

The novel tells a story about a professor by the name of Rick Silver whose goal is to attain tenure in the University’s School of Business. In doing so he was given the opportunity to teach an executive graduate business course for management professionals. He used the course to introduce a host of business methodologies and philosophies that can produce success if used correctly, most importantly time management and theory of constraints. The novel also gives insight on how fast and constant the business industry is changing by highlighting the issue of falling enrollment rates at the University’s School of Business.

The main character in “The Goal”, Alex Rogo, manages a production plant that is unprofitable and not efficient with its resources. Alex is given a short amount of time to turn the operations at the plant around and make it an efficient, successful production plant. Throughout the book, Alex Rogo speaks to Jonah a number of times and learns a great amount of information from him. The first significant time that Alex and Jonah spoke was during their chance meeting at an airport lounge. During this conversation, Alex learned a great deal about productivity and goal setting. Jonah explains to Alex that a company has one goal and that the manager must be open about the goal. Jonah then discusses the definition of productivity with Alex and tells him that the true definition is bringing a company closer to its goal that it has set. Among these concepts that Alex learned, he also learned more about his own management style and how it could be improved. Alex learned that he must question common concepts regarding managing and that he must think differently in order to be successful.

In order to be productive all members of staff should be aware of the goals of the firm. Knowing the goals allows the manager to make effective decisions. The goals of the firm can be viewed as the motives of the entrepreneur’s who own and run the firm. There a number of goals that a firm can pursue in its day-to-day

During this class there have been many interesting topics being discussed; topics that I didn’t even begin to think about. After reading Chapter 18 and learning about the importance of performance planning and setting performance objectives, it has opened my eyes up to a lot more ideas. Having a vision and plan to not only make yourself succeed, but those around you and the company is a part of managing performance and objectives.

The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt is an entertaining and thought provoking business book. The story is about Unico manufacturing plant and its manager – Alex Rogo whose job and marriage is hanging in the air. Bill Peach, who is the factory executive comes into the plant and notices that production has gone down since Alex has been appointed manager. There is six months of production backlog and late shipment of order to customers. Unico is neither productive nor profitable. As a result Alex finds himself in an uncomfortable position of having three months to turn things around or the plant goes downhill.

The story begins with outlining the problems Alex Rogo is facing. His plant is incredibly

Through that conversation, Alex realized that “productivity is the act of bringing a company closer to its goal” ( 1992). Alex thought the company’s goal is to increase efficiencies but he later realized that every company’s goal, including his plant, is to make money or to be profitable and anything that comes closer to the goal is considered as productive.

Edwin Locke and Gary Latham will be the first ones to openly admit there are active limitations with the goal setting theory. It is not uncommon for individual goals to conflict with organizational goals. Moreover, research has proven complex goals have sparked motivation in teams to implement strategies with substantially high amounts of risk (Knight, Durham, & Locke, 2001). Sometimes people will believe higher risk strategies produce the greatest returns, yet high-risk goals consistently result in failure as well (Knight et. al, 2001). Additionally, when individuals simultaneously create two goals there is a greater chance they exert too much energy and focus on achieving just one of those goals. This can lead to one of the goals not receiving enough attention, which can potentially result in the person failing to reach the end result in either goal. In short, these are three common limitations of goal setting that typically draw concerns from other researchers and theorists. However, it is important people are aware of the limitations that do not receive as much attention, such as team goal setting, unethical behavior in high performance goals, and subconscious goals.

The goal of a manufacturing organization is to make money. Jonah poses this as a question: "What is the goal?" and Rogo actually struggles with it for a day or two, but any manager or executive that can't answer that question without hesitation should be fired without hesitation.

The Goal a Process of Ongoing Improvements was Dr.Eliyahu M Goldratt first book. It is a fiction business management novel that primarily focuses on the theory of constraints. The author Goldratt is a critical acclaimed Israeli business manager, physicist professor, and author. He is thought of as the guru of business operation. Goldratt is the creator of optimized production technique and the theory of constraints. He also is the author of the following books: Production the TOC way, IT’S Not LUCK, Critical Chain, Necessary but not sufficient, ISNT It Obvious, The Choice, The Race, What is This Thing Called: theory of constraints, and The Haystack Syndrome.

I recently read "Gung Ho!" written by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. This book gives a unique perspective on the leader versus manager concepts. It depicts the struggles a General Manager faces as she is given the daunting task of running Walton Works # 2. This book shows how motivation, appreciation, and respect can help to transform a self-destructive plant into a thriving successful business.

Otherwise, the plant will be closed. The problem starts off when his plant cannot ship quality products on time and with a competitive price. A few days later, Alex get an e- mail from his boss, Mr. Peach, the division vice president invited him for an important meeting in the headquarter with all plant managers and his employees. Mr. Peach began the meeting by talking about the bad performance in the first quarter. During the talk, Alex found a cigarette in the pocket of his jacket. The cigarette reminded Alex of the conversation between him and Jonah, a physics professor, at the airport coming back from a business trip. Professor Jonah believes that the problem of Alex is because he does not know the goal of his company.

I read the fictional book called, The goal: A process of ongoing improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff cox. Goldratt has an extensive history of writing novels about business problems and their solutions. His list of work includes; The race, The haystack syndrome, What is This Thing Called Theory of Constraints and How Should it be Implemented?, It’s not luck, critical chain, and necessary but not sufficient. With his most recent work being in 2009 called Isn’t it obvious focusing on retail. The authors purpose for writing this book would be to educate and show examples on how to think outside the box or solve solutions, possibly even save companies. In his own words, “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” (Goldratt, Intro to revised edition page 2). He states he wants to show that these methods aren’t fantasy and have been/are working in pants around the world, and says that, “Finally, and most importantly, I wanted to show that we can all be outstanding scientists. The secret of being a good scientist, I believe, lies not in our brain power. We have enough. We simply need to look at reality and think logically and precisely about what we see” (Goldratt, Introduction page 2). This story is about a failing or close to failing manufacturing plant in a place called Bearington. The novel begins with the main character Alex Rogo, a

When reading the book The Goal written by Eliyahu Goldratt, there were many lessons that I learned in order to have a clear and concise understanding of a positive level of productivity in a company. To have a positive level of productivity there are may components that are taken into consideration. Understanding what it actually means to be productive and how to increase the level of productivity by knowing the actual goal of the company that is trying to be reached and the components that go into the process of being productive. There are many factors that contribute to the level of productivity and being able to identify these factors is the key ingredient to having a successful level of productivity.