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1-Page Summary of The Goal
Overall Summary
Alex Rogo is a manager of a manufacturing plant in the United States. One day, he arrives at work to find his corporate division manager, Bill Peach, waiting for him. Alex’s boss tells him that they have an important order to ship and it has to be done by evening. If Alex doesn’t turn the business around within three months, then his boss will shut down the company. Alex manages to get everything together with some help from Bob (his production manager). However, when he goes home that night after working all night long at the office like usual without seeing his wife Julie much lately because she gets upset about their relationship not being as close as they used to be since he works so much more than before; this upsets her even more since she wants them both to spend time together more often now that they’re married and going on two years of marriage and three kids later which makes her feel neglected but she knows how hard Alex works for UniCo so she does understand why he needs to work so hard but still wishes things would change between them again soon or else there might be trouble in paradise between them when one can’t give 100% attention towards another person due to having too many other responsibilities pulling you away from each other…
Alex is at a meeting of his division when he realizes that no one seems to know how to manage the manufacturing process. He remembers advice from Jonah, an old mentor who had told him two weeks ago that if Alex were ever in trouble with the plant, all he would have to do was talk about it and Jonh would immediately be able to tell what problems it has. Jonah advised Alex that if he wanted to be successful, then he should figure out what goal his business is trying to achieve, and anything else can be measured by whether or not it helps accomplish that goal. Alex discusses this idea with Lou, his chief accountant. Lou agrees but thinks they need metrics for measuring their goals.
Alex calls Jonah and asks for help. Alex needs to figure out whether the plant is making money, so he must measure throughput, inventory, and operating expense. Throughput describes how much money a manufacturing system makes from sales. Inventory describes the money contained in that system as raw material or equipment. Operating expense describes the money required to turn inventory into throughput. The next day at work, Alex presents these new metrics to Bob, Lou, Stacey (the plant’s inventory control manager), and Julie (Alex’s wife). They discuss whether robots actually generate more throughput or waste money by doing unnecessary work and creating unnecessary inventory. They still feel uncertain about this issue so Alex decides to go see Jonah in New York City for advice on what they should do with their robots because Jonah has experience with this kind of thing before at his old job when he was an engineer at a previous company where they had robots working alongside humans who were also engineers like him but now he works for himself as an independent consultant helping other companies solve problems just like this one too even though it isn’t always easy sometimes especially if you’re not really sure exactly what you’re doing or going after all which is why some people need someone else around who knows more than they do about whatever it happens to be that they don’t know anything about right now anyway which could be something important enough that it might end up having serious consequences later on down the road if we aren’t careful enough to make sure we get things done correctly while we still have time left over before everything starts falling apart completely instead of trying our best not only just wasting our time here being lazy goofing off playing games online reading articles surfing websites checking email sending texts messaging friends posting pictures updating statuses chatting tweeting writing blog posts watching videos streaming movies listening music playing video games etc., etc., etc..
