This book review was written by Arvind Kumar Singh, CSB student from the PGDM class of 2018. 

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt is a gripping business novel that introduces the theory of constraints. It describes tools and steps which help keep organizations alive. It compels you to think logically about problems and lay down the cause and effect relationships between actions and results.

The story revolves around Alex, a competent production manager, who works for UniCo. He is delighted and equally distraught that he would be staying back with his family in his hometown while his firm is on the verge of a shutdown.

At UniCo, delayed shipments and production backlogs are growing. The company is unable to sell good quality products at a reasonable cost. The team, headed by Alex, is trying to figure out the root cause which means long hours and sacrificing his time with the family. One day, he bumps into Jonah, his physics professor, who gives certain recommendations which might help turn the situation around. Alex immediately deploys his team to identify the processes which can be implemented, to improve the production flow and ship the orders on time. Hard work pays off and Alex is able to stabilize the plant operations and eventually makes it one of the most productive plants in the company. He also revives his relationship with his wife Julie and spends quality time with her. He is promoted and becomes President at Unico and is now responsible for applying Jonah’s cues across the entire business unit.

Alex also realizes that he needs to adapt to different ways of managing the business as per the constraints. Jonah had shared some key questions which required answers from Alex. This laid the steps to the Process of On-Going Improvement (POOGI).

Step 1: Identify the system’s bottlenecks

Step 2: Decide how to exploit those bottlenecks

Step 3: Subordinate every other decision to ‘step two decisions’

Step 4: Elevate the systems bottlenecks

Step 5: if, in a previous step, a bottleneck has been broken, go back to the beginning (Step 1).

The Goal is a classic novel on the theory of constraints which covers various aspects of a manager’s journey starting from operations, sales and marketing, accounting, process improvement, team work and maintaining a work life balance. Since it is written with several characters at play, it makes the book all the more interesting. It enlists several business fundamentals which are extremely helpful for managers, CEO’s or MBA graduates to achieve their goal.