Assignment

"The Goal" Report:

After reading "The Goal," please submit a 1-2 page write-up (11 pt, 1.5 line spacing, 1inch margins on each side)with answers to the following questions:

1. Provide the definitions of throughput, inventory and operational expense as they are provided in "The Goal." What is the common feature of these definitions, and why are these definitions more convenient to determine whether a firm reaches its goal?

2. How does "The Goal" define a bottleneck resource? Develop your own simple example of a bottleneck to demonstrate. (Not the examples from the book, not artificial examples!)

Example: During the 20-30 minute period before the beginning of classes at Baruch, there are long lines that form in front of the elevators at NVC. This is an indication that elevators become the bottlenecks in the process that transports students from the ground floor to the floors where the classrooms are.

3. Provide recommended actions to do to increase throughput by improving the movement of flow units in a production/service system. (Identify at least 4 distinct principles.)

Example: Inserting quality control before a bottleneck resource ensures that the bottleneck resource would only work on semi-finished products that are not defective, thus preventing limited bottleneck capacity from being used for processing products that could not have been delivered to customers.

4. Provide an explanation of the pitfalls, as discussed in "The Goal," of using cost accounting data for decision making. (Identify at least 3 distinct issues.)

Example: Over-utilizing non bottleneck resources to improve efficiencies cannot reduce the unit costs, as doing so would not increase the throughput, but instead increase inventory.