Your assignment is to write a reflection paper on The Goal: a process of continu

Question

Your assignment is to write a reflection paper on The Goal: a process of continuous improvement by Eliyahu Goldratt. A reflection paper asks for your views and feelings about the topic. It is not simply a regurgitation of facts from the book. In this reflection paper, I ask that you consider the following three questions. Note that I am looking for your interpretation of what you learned in reading the book.

Say we have identified the bottleneck machine of a production process. List at least four things suggested in the book that will result in a greater throughput without actually expanding the physical capacity of the machine.

Say you have a plant producing a single product that passes through several machines. The industrial engineer suggests that it would be a good idea to make all machines have the same capacity. That way when demand exceeds the capacity, all the machines can run at 100% efficiency. What would Jonah say about this?

You are the manager of a manufacturing plant. The plant is having trouble making a profit, deliveries are always late, customers are dissatisfied, and the workers in the plant are upset and are threatening a strike. Your boss will close the plant if you don't do a lot better by cutting costs and increasing sales. Besides that, your spouse may divorce you and your children are failing in school. Your staff has come up with the following action plans. Comment on the advisability of each plan in terms of Throughput, Inventory and Operating Expense. I want more than a direction of change. I want a reason for the change.

The process engineer suggests that you find the most labor-intensive operation that the plant performs. Reduce costs by automating the operation.

The plant supervisor suggests that you should tell each worker that a minute of pay means a minute of work. Make spot checks on the plant floor and if a person is idle his or her pay will be reduced.

The purchasing manager suggests that you reduce costs by cutting inventory to the bone. Don't order raw materials until the last possible minute.

The facilities manager suggests that you reduce costs by eliminating excess capacity of the production facilities. All departments in the plant should have the same capacity.

The marketing manager suggests that you increase sales by reducing the prices charged for your products.

Your spouse suggests that you embezzle company funds and run away to Brazil so that you can devote some quality time to the family.

Explanation / Answer

Eliyahu Goldratt in his article “The Goal: a process of continuous improvement” does effectively facilitate to elucidate that organizations do have three different options for system improvement such as increasing throughput (T), reducing inventory (I) or reducing operating expense (OE). However the practical limits of reducing inventory and operating expenses are indeed relatively low as system cannot produce outputs without them.

Hypothetically there's no upper limit on how much an organization can increase its throughput as market sizes are limited. However the prospective of efficiently enhancing T tend to be much higher than the potentiality of reducing I and OE. Furthermore it effectively necessitates for a basic model facilitating system improvements thus focusing on increasing T and enduring the reduction of I and OE as secondary priority.

Rather than spending time, energy and resources across the entire system business administrator indeed needs to effectively focus on that part of the system which eventually has the potentiality to produce immediate system improvement. Furthermore Goldratt outlines several principles which ultimately helps to efficiently create an environment conductive to the rigid part of his theory. However prescriptive theory part of constraints indeed help organizations effectually respond towards management concerns regarding systems and their constraints.

A constraint is indeed regarded as something which eventually averts a system from attaining high level of performance related to its business goal and objective. Furthermore a system is regarded as any collection of interconnected parts sharing a common goal. Constraints may be for instance an individual or department which in due course fails to keep up with market demand. However if this department could produce more it would eventually facilitate organization with enhance sales and revenue.

Goldratt suggested focused steps eventually facilitating to effectively manage resources and market constraints. It comprised of effectively deciding on system goal, determining performance measures, identifying constraints and elucidating on how to take advantage of constraints thus ultimately helping to form a basis aimed towards continuous improvement.

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