The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement Kindle Edition

Good read. Not just a business book, but about problem solving in general. Other reviews will tell you more. Kindle version is terrible. Many missing words. Can figure most of it out from context, but it disturbs the flow, and, well, you just shouldn't have to. 4 starts for the book, 2 for the kindle screw up.

I am reading this having already read Gene Kim's "The Phoenix Project." As you might expect, I am in IT - so why read this? In short, I think the novel does a fantastic job of introducing the down-sides of "Taylorist" management approaches, even in manufacturing, which is what Taylorism was developed for in the first place. By presenting the material in the form of a novel with a clear narrative path, it presents the basic ideas and some of their most important implications in an easily-digested and enjoyable way. You can then go on and read some of the excellent nonfiction literature on Lean that is targeted at your type of business and start with a intuition about where things can go, making that literature easier to digest and understand. (As an example, I read Reinertson's excellent "Principles of Product Development Flow" before reading this. I understood in an "I can apply these ideas" way about 30% of the work, and kinda-sorta got the rest. AFTER reading this book and seeing a bigger picture, much more of his theory makes sense to me in a way that I can actually use it now.)

The book has a few dings against it - mostly simply that it is dated. The deteriorating relationship with his stay-at-home wife is realistic for the time in which the book was written - but it smacks of 1986 now. (This from a guy who got married in 1986...) While it is a bit of a distraction, it does help the book make the point that improving things at work in the right way can and does improve people's outside-of-work lives in very real ways. You will not get that empathetic viewpoint from the nonfiction literature on the subject, so the inclusion is still a strength - it is just that the content has not aged all that well.

On the positive side, it swings into other ideas too. The discussion of how traditional accounting rules and consequential financial controls can create a set of counterproductive incentives is telling, and presages by a couple of decades the work being done now in the Beyond Budgeting movement. So it is a great jumping-off point for that too.

Both this book and "The Phoenix Project" are pretty easy reads. If you gun through both over a weekend or two you will be able to see how the principles of Lean developed in manufacturing can be applied to other kinds of work.

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, is an excellent an enjoyable read. It has everything from personal experience, step-by-step discoveries and solutions, misconceptions in the production process, and all the way to inadequate management. Eliyahu also successfully incorporates his own personal life adversity and success while dealing with his professional problems at career.
If you already know the basic definitions for the terms such as bottle necks, efficiency, inventory, and productivity; The Goal has Alex Rogo, the plant manager, discovering these terms and more with a deeper meaning and how they actually relate to manufacturing. For example, at the beginning of the book, Alex was extremely proud of increasing his efficiency and believed it created a positive effect on their overall productivity. After running into an old friend Jonah, which questions his increased efficiency and if they actually increased productivity, Alex soon discovers his misconception of efficiency. Throughout the book, he looks to Jonah like a mentor because Jonah guilds Alex to a deeper understanding of processing product improvement. His long hours and sleepless nights finally lead Alex to understanding the true meaning of efficiency. However, this is only the beginning of the story and Alex has the rest of the book to grasp the full picture of process improvement.
I personal do not read often because I have never found reading as a form of entertainment or enjoyment. With that being said, I surprisingly took a liking to this book and found myself dying to read the next chapter. These lessons that Alex discovered are something that should be learned by anybody studying management, production, process flow, operations, or industrial and manufacturing side or along those lines. I believe these lessons will be extremely useful to me in the future and I know you will feel the same way.

I have found that reading for pleasure as an engineering student has steadily decreased as I have delved deeper into my studies. I began reading Eliyahu Goldratt’s “The Goal” as an assignment for a statistical quality control class and finished the book three days later, not because I needed to but because I found myself reading for pleasure once more. The above statement is why I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a thoughtful, suspenseful novel.
“The Goal” tells a story about a manufacturing plant manager, Alex Rogo, who is struggling to maintain a work-life balance. His problems at work overflow into his personal life at home and this creates problems with his wife and children. As his problems continue to grow he is introduced to an innovative concept which gradually begins to help him solve his problems at his manufacturing plant. As the story unfolds Goldratt introduces various concepts through relatable examples which allows the reader to experience and understand the reasoning behind these concepts. This is most clearly seen during his participation in his son’s hiking trip.
By the end of “The Goal” the reader has been introduced to and forced to critically think about the Theory of Constraints. Beyond reading this book for pleasure, anyone looking to increase their knowledge and change their way of thinking about management should read this book.

As a story it was compelling but as a book about business it was mixed. It sounded need except after the story is over, in the end, it's pointed out the techniques taught by the story didn't actually work for several businesses which kind of pulls the rug out from under the message.