Read Online The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu Goldratt - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Eliyahu Goldratt
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satisfaction.
All of those are essential to running the business successfully. What do they all do? They enable the company to make money. But they are not the goals themselves; they’re just the means of achieving the goal.
How do I know for sure?
Well, I don’t. Not absolutely. But adopting "making money’’ as the goal of a manufacturing organization looks like a pretty good assumption. Because, for one thing, there isn’t one item on that list that’s worth a damn if the company isn’t making money.
Because what happens if a company doesn’t make money? If the company doesn’t make money by producing and selling products, or by maintenance contracts, or by selling some of its assets, or by some other means . . . the company is finished. It will cease to function. Money must be the goal. Nothing else works in its place. Anyway, it’s the one assumption I have to make.
If the goal is to make money, then (putting it in terms Jonah might have used), an action that moves us toward making money is productive. And an action that takes away from making money is non-productive. For the past year or more, the plant has been moving away from the goal more than toward it. So to save the plant, I have to make it productive; I have to make the plant make money for UniCo. That’s a simplified statement of what’s happening, but it’s accurate. At least it’s a logical starting point.
Through the windshield, the world is bright and cold. The sunlight seems to have become much more intense. I look around as if I have just come out of a long trance. Everything is familiar, but seems new to me. I take my last swallow of beer. I suddenly feel I have to get going.
6
By my watch, it’s about 4:30 when I park the Mazda in the plant lot. One thing I’ve effectively managed today is to evade the office. I reach for my briefcase and get out of the car. The glass box of the office in front of me is silent as death. Like an ambush. I know they’re all inside waiting for me, waiting to pounce. I decide to disappoint everyone. I decide to take a detour through the plant. I just want to take a fresh look at things.
I walk down to a door into the plant and go inside. From my briefcase, I get the safety glasses I always carry. There is a rack of hard hats by one of the desks over by the wall. I steal one from there, put it on, and walk inside.
As I round a corner and enter one of the work areas, I happen to surprise three guys sitting on a bench in one of the open bays. They’re sharing a newspaper, reading and talking with each other. One of them sees me. He nudges the others. The newspaper is folded away with the grace of a snake disappearing in the grass. All three of them nonchalantly become purposeful and go off in three separate directions.
I might have walked on by another time. But today it makes me mad. Dammit, the hourly people know this plant is in trouble. With the layoffs we’ve had, they have to know. You’d think they’d all try to work harder to save this place. But here we’ve got three guys, all of them making probably ten or twelve bucks an hour, sitting on their asses. I go and find their supervisor.
After I tell him that three of his people are sitting around with nothing to do, he gives me some excuse about how they’re mostly caught up on their quotas and they’re waiting for more parts.
So I tell him, "If you can’t keep them working, I’ll find a department that can. Now find something for them to do. You use your people, or lose ’em—you got it?’’
From down the aisle, I look over my shoulder. The super now has the three guys moving some materials from one side of the aisle to the other. I know it’s probably just something to keep them busy, but what the hell; at least those guys are working. If I hadn’t said something, who knows how long they’d have sat there?
Then it occurs to me: those three guys are doing something now, but is that going to help us make money? They might
All of those are essential to running the business successfully. What do they all do? They enable the company to make money. But they are not the goals themselves; they’re just the means of achieving the goal.
How do I know for sure?
Well, I don’t. Not absolutely. But adopting "making money’’ as the goal of a manufacturing organization looks like a pretty good assumption. Because, for one thing, there isn’t one item on that list that’s worth a damn if the company isn’t making money.
Because what happens if a company doesn’t make money? If the company doesn’t make money by producing and selling products, or by maintenance contracts, or by selling some of its assets, or by some other means . . . the company is finished. It will cease to function. Money must be the goal. Nothing else works in its place. Anyway, it’s the one assumption I have to make.
If the goal is to make money, then (putting it in terms Jonah might have used), an action that moves us toward making money is productive. And an action that takes away from making money is non-productive. For the past year or more, the plant has been moving away from the goal more than toward it. So to save the plant, I have to make it productive; I have to make the plant make money for UniCo. That’s a simplified statement of what’s happening, but it’s accurate. At least it’s a logical starting point.
Through the windshield, the world is bright and cold. The sunlight seems to have become much more intense. I look around as if I have just come out of a long trance. Everything is familiar, but seems new to me. I take my last swallow of beer. I suddenly feel I have to get going.
6
By my watch, it’s about 4:30 when I park the Mazda in the plant lot. One thing I’ve effectively managed today is to evade the office. I reach for my briefcase and get out of the car. The glass box of the office in front of me is silent as death. Like an ambush. I know they’re all inside waiting for me, waiting to pounce. I decide to disappoint everyone. I decide to take a detour through the plant. I just want to take a fresh look at things.
I walk down to a door into the plant and go inside. From my briefcase, I get the safety glasses I always carry. There is a rack of hard hats by one of the desks over by the wall. I steal one from there, put it on, and walk inside.
As I round a corner and enter one of the work areas, I happen to surprise three guys sitting on a bench in one of the open bays. They’re sharing a newspaper, reading and talking with each other. One of them sees me. He nudges the others. The newspaper is folded away with the grace of a snake disappearing in the grass. All three of them nonchalantly become purposeful and go off in three separate directions.
I might have walked on by another time. But today it makes me mad. Dammit, the hourly people know this plant is in trouble. With the layoffs we’ve had, they have to know. You’d think they’d all try to work harder to save this place. But here we’ve got three guys, all of them making probably ten or twelve bucks an hour, sitting on their asses. I go and find their supervisor.
After I tell him that three of his people are sitting around with nothing to do, he gives me some excuse about how they’re mostly caught up on their quotas and they’re waiting for more parts.
So I tell him, "If you can’t keep them working, I’ll find a department that can. Now find something for them to do. You use your people, or lose ’em—you got it?’’
From down the aisle, I look over my shoulder. The super now has the three guys moving some materials from one side of the aisle to the other. I know it’s probably just something to keep them busy, but what the hell; at least those guys are working. If I hadn’t said something, who knows how long they’d have sat there?
Then it occurs to me: those three guys are doing something now, but is that going to help us make money? They might
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