“The Goal (30th Anniversary Edition)” by Eliyahu M Goldratt and Jeff Cox

  • “Science” is about ‘common sense’
  • Make sure you are measuring the correct things
  • “Productivity is accomplishing something in relations to a goal”
  • The measurements are
    • Net profile
    • ROI
    • Net cash flow
  • ‘How do we link actual work to this money?’
  • New measurements
    • Throughput is the rate the system generates money through sales
    • Inventory is the money invested in things purchased to sell
    • Operational expense is the money the system spends to convert the inventory to throughput
  • The pursuit of efficiency is often counter to the goal
  • Dependent events limits the maximum fluctuations you can handle
  • Balance flow, not capacity
    • (All cars traveling at the same, slow speed, move fast than if left to their own choices)
  • Bottlenecks are when market demand exceeds capacity
  • Activating a resource is different from using it
  • We seek to optimize the whole system, not for local optimizations
  • Common practices can impede common sense
  • Kanban is a mechanism to signal for a backfill
    • This limits the available quantities, this also limits excess inventory
  • Sophisticated algorithms that track all variables are really difficult to get correct and not particularly useful
  • The effort to capitalize on improved service is markedly different than the effort needed to build the company

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