The story and cadence of the book are established. Goldratt’s tone is set right away – he focuses on the sensations of being in a plant and his writing devices, including character names can be transparent. Rogo expresses a desire to have a shot at being a CEO someday, but that is difficult to envision given his current position. Rogo’s newest tool – the NCX-10 robot, should be having a more positive impact than it is. Three of his team members are looking for guidance, and at the same time Rogo’s boss, Bill Peach, is on site from corporate complaining about a late order for a big customer, Bucky Burnside. The book drops us in to the life of Alex Rogo, our narrator, who is over-whelmed with issues as he begins his day as a plant manager at UniCo’s Bearington Plant. The Goal’s persuasion around the usefulness of the Theory of Constraints is built on a thorough discussion of a limited number of topics, but each is debated in rich detail and in many scenarios. In my re-reading, what stood out was that Goldratt really put forward just a few limited topics, but showed all of the arguments around them in several ways.
The Goal stands out because it did all of them and was successful in the pursuit. Goldratt’s treatment of the components of ToC are very thorough and are demonstrated to the reader in many ways.īooks may pursue one of these styles, a few may pursue two of them, but even fewer pursue all of these methods at once. If written in 2018 – nearly 25 years later – a shorter book would be expected.
As a novel, it includes family and parenting plot arcs that are also framed within ToC.The manufacturing topics are introduced through the tutelage of Jonah, a consultant and former professor to the main character, Alex Rogo.The author explains complex topics about manufacturing through the characters’ dialog and activities.This is a first person novel told from the point of view of Alex Rogo, the narrator.Readers of The Goal experience a unique combination of styles: ToC was first used into improve production plant manufacturing, but as Goldratt and his co-author Jeff Cox show in The Goal – it has broader applications. Written in 1984, The Goal lays out Eliyahu Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints (“ToC”) in the format of a novel.