http://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0884271781/
This novel was written about twenty years back and has sold more than 3 million copies.
This is a story about a factory manager called Alex. He has been newly transferred to take charge of a factory. The factory is in bad shape. It is sinking more and more into the red. The production schedule is hopelessly out of sync. The customers that have not already left, are on the verge of doing so. Everybody is working 24×7, even Alex. This starts affecting Alex’s family life, his wife decides to take a break to think through the things. His boss has threatened that he will shut down the factory unless Alex pulls rabbit out of a hat in three months.
The book has special significance for me. I remember working on a shop-floor with inventories piled sky-high. I remember making production manager’s life miserable over costs (that I now know) were horribly in-correctly calculated.
“Sorry, Mr Rogo,” says Cravitz. “We have to observe standard policy.”
“But the plant is different now!”
Around the table, all five accountants are frowning at Lou and me. I final shake my head. There is no sense in attempting to appeal to them. All they know are their accounting standards.
The audit team recalculates the numbers, and it now looks as if our costs have gone up. I try to head them off by calling Peach….
Alex’s salvation comes in the form of his old college professor that Alex meets after a long time. They meet by chance for a short time while on a transit airport and the professor agrees to help Alex. He helps Alex not by giving solutions but by asking questions. Slowly things start coming on track. His wife returns and the story ends when Alex gets a promotion.
Sounds like an ordinary story? I would not say that this is a particularly well-written novel. I mean it is average, it is not bad but we certainly know that author did not hope for a Booker prize.
Then how come this novel sold 3,000,000 copies (and counting)?
On one level this is a story about Alex but on another level this is a primer about Theory of Constraints.
The author has written a novel to explain the particularly complex topic about constraints. For e.g. Alex takes his son out for a boy scout expedition whether they had to hike to a destination over two days. The boys were travelling in a line when Alex discovers that the line is getting longer and longer. He realizes that there is no chance of covering the distance within two days and decides to find a solution to the problem. Fortunately he had discussed something similar with his professor and the solution comes to him in a flash. This is our first introduction to the concept of a ‘bottleneck’. Needless to say he implements the solution on the boy scouts group and they reach their destination on time.
This book is where it all started: Lean manufacturing, KANBAN (which seems to have crept into software project management) to name a few. There is no way of over-emphasizing the effect of this book on the production systems world over.
I was particular happy with the concept of valuing WIP/finished product at raw material cost. I remember spending long nights in front of lotus 1-2-3 calculating those recovery rates and now I realize that I was not helping the business with these calculations. What I was doing is actually hiding the problems and showing false profits. (Don’t worry if you do not understand these terms, the author has woven everything in a story and explains the concepts quite well. After all Alex has a boss who does not really understands these concepts as well and Alex needs to explain this in layman’s terms.)
How many times have you heard about “Process of continuous improvement”? If this term does not make any sense to you then I strongly recommend you read this story of Alex.
