An Israeli physicist decided to explain his operations management theory by writing a novel, and the result has spent forty years on the reading lists of every business school.
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A novel about operations management that has sold millions of copies and is taught in every business school. Alex Rogo has ninety days to save his factory and does so by applying the Theory of Constraints: every system has a bottleneck that determines its overall throughput, and optimizing anything else is a mirage.
An Israeli physicist decided to explain his operations management theory by writing a novel, and the result has spent forty years on the reading lists of every business school. Alex Rogo runs a factory on the verge of closure and a marriage in the same state; with the Socratic help of Jonah — a stand-in for Goldratt himself — he discovers that everything he was taught about efficiency is false. Keeping every machine and worker busy does not optimize the plant: it drowns it in inventory. Because every system has a constraint — a bottleneck — that determines its total throughput, and an hour lost at the bottleneck is an hour lost for the whole system, while an hour gained anywhere else is a mirage. The five focusing steps (identify the constraint, exploit it, subordinate everything else, elevate it, and start again) are the Theory of Constraints in action. The novelized form, with its functional characters, is a vehicle — but it works: you understand it and you don't forget it. Applicable far beyond the factory: to projects, software, services, and life itself.
For operations, project, or team managers in any sector, and for any reader who prefers learning a thinking framework through a story.
FactGoldratt, a physicist by training, published «The Goal» in 1984; it has sold millions of copies in over thirty languages and remains required reading in MBA programs worldwide.
