The Goal - By Eliyahu Goldratt

Study Questions

1) In the first three chapters, what are some of the plant and division problems? What do you think the "root causes" of the problems are?

2) In the fourth chapter, what questions does Jonah ask to test whether the plant is healthy?

3) In Chapters 4 and 5, what are some of the incorrect goals considered by Al?

4) What is the primary goal? From Chapter 6, what are the two other measures that are important?

5) From Chapter 8 - why is it so hard for a plant manager or shift supervisor to "see" you're their contribution to the goal?

6) From Chapter 8: What are the three other measures of the goal, and their precise definitions?

7) Ch 9: How does the "efficiency" measure hurt the goal?

8) Ch 10: Is there any difference between idle time, processing time and indirect time, with respect to the goal?

9) Ch 11. What are the two key phenomena, found in every plant, that make a planning a perfectly balanced plant impossible?

10) Ch 11. How do the two phenomena cause problems when attempting to cut operational expense until throughput equals demand?

11) Ch 13. How is a boyscout hike like a production process?

12) Ch 14. In the match bowl game, why is throughput only 20 (2 per round), instead of the expected 35 (3.5 per round)?

13) Ch 15. The troop naturally arranges itself from fastest to slowest, as in a race. However, the troop only meets its goal when all scouts reach destination. How does putting Herbie in the front help?

14) Ch 16. Why didn't they make the shipment of 100 when Pete's people made their quota?

15) Ch 17. Define bottleneck (Herbie). How do you find it? Where do you put it in the production process?

16) Ch 19. How can using an old, inefficient machine improve process efficiency?

17) Ch 19. How might you estimate the hourly cost of a bottleneck?

18) Ch 20. How does prioritizing customer orders over other work in process improve a key metric in achieving the goal?

19) Ch 21. How can keeping a worker or machine busy get in the way of achieving the goal?

20) Ch 23. What are three process/assumption/rule changes that improve throughput at the bottleneck?

21) Ch 24. What can happen if you improve performance at the bottleneck?

22) Ch 25. How can a worker staying busy 100% of the time increase costs?

23) Ch 28. How can batch sizes be cut and setups increased without reducing output? What benefits result?

24) Ch 30 What is the paradox between standard accounting practices and actual plant performance efficiencies?

25) Ch 31. What are the three errant assumptions that Al challenged which lead to improved performance at the plan?

26) Ch 36. What are the 5 steps in the process to alleviate bottlenecks?