The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, Third Revised Edition Page 4

  too many of the wrong things back when I was an expediter."

  "Listen, you did a hell of a job today. I mean that. But we set

  policy for a purpose. You should know that. And let me tell you

  that Bill Peach, for all the trouble he caused to get one order

  shipped, would be back here pounding on our heads at the end

  of the month if we didn't manage the plant for efficiency."

  He nods slowly, but then he asks, "So what do we do the next

  time this happens?"

  I smile.

  "Probably the same damn thing," I tell him. Then I turn and

  say, "Maxine, give us two more here, please. No, on second

  thought, we're going to save you a lot of walking. Make it a

  pitcher."

  So we made it through today's crisis. We won. Just barely.

  And now that Donovan is gone and the effects of the alcohol are

  wearing off, I can't see what there was to celebrate. We managed

  to ship one very late order today. Whoopee.

  The real issue is I've got a manufacturing plant on the criti-

  cal list. Peach has given it three months to live before he pulls the

  plug.

  That means I have two, maybe three more monthly reports

  in which to change his mind. After that, the sequence of events

  will be that he'll go to corporate management and present the

  numbers. Everybody around the table will look at Granby.

  Granby will ask a couple of questions, look at the numbers one

  more time, and nod his head. And that will be it. Once the execu-

  tive decision has been made, there will be no changing it.

  They'll give us time to finish our backlog. And then 600 peo-

  ple will head for the unemployment lines—where they will join

  their friends and former co-workers, the other 600 people whom

  we have already laid off.

  And so the UniWare Division will drop out of yet another

  market in which it can't compete. Which means the world will no

  longer be able to buy any more of the fine products we can't

  make cheap enough or fast enough or good enough or some-

  thing enough to beat the Japanese. Or most anybody else out

  there for that matter. That's what makes us another fine division

  in the UniCo "family" of businesses (which has a record of earn-

  ings growth that looks like Kansas), and that's why we'll be just

  E.M. Goldratt

  The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

  Captured by Plamen T.

  24

  another fine company in the Who-Knows-What Corporation af-

  ter the big boys at headquarters put together some merger with

  some other loser. That seems to be the essence of the company's

  strategic plan these days.

  What's the matter with us?

  Every six months it seems like some group from corporate is

  coming out with some new program that's the latest panacea to

  all our problems. Some of them seem to work, but none of them

  does any good. We limp along month after month, and it never

  gets any better. Mostly it gets worse.

  Okay. Enough of the bitching, Rogo. Try to calm down. Try

  to think about this rationally. There's nobody around. It's late. I

  am alone finally . . . here in the coveted corner office, throne

  room of my empire, such as it is. No interruptions. The phone is

  not ringing. So let's try to analyze the situation. Why can't we

  consistently get a quality product out the door on time at the cost

  that can beat the competition?

  Something is wrong. I don't know what it is, but something

  basic is very wrong. I must be missing something.

  I'm running what should be a good plant. Hell, it is a good

  plant. We've got the technology. We've got some of the best n/c

  machines money can buy. We've got robots. We've got a com-

  puter system that's supposed to do everything but make coffee.

  We've got good people. For the most part we do. Okay, we're

  short in a couple of areas, but the people we have are good for

  the most part, even though we sure could use more of them. And

  I don't have too many problems with the union. They're a pain in

  the ass sometimes, but the competition has unions too. And, hell,

  the workers made some concessions last time—not as many as

  we'd have liked, but we have a livable contract.

  I've got the machines. I've got the people. I've got all the

  materials I need. I know there's a market out there, because the

  competitors' stuff is selling. So what the hell is it?

  It's the damn competition. That's what's killing us. Ever

  since the Japanese entered our markets, the competition has been

  incredible. Three years ago, they were beating us on quality and

  product design. We've just about matched them on those. But

  now they're beating us on price and deliveries. I wish I knew

  their secret.

  What can I possibly do to be more competitive?

  E.M. Goldratt

  The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

  Captured by Plamen T.

  25

  I've done cost reduction. No other manager in this division

  has cut costs to the degree I have. There is nothing left to trim.

  And, despite what Peach says, my efficiencies are pretty

  damn good. He's got other plants with worse, I know that. But

  the better ones don't have the competition I do. Maybe I could

  push efficiencies some more, but ... I don't know. It's like

  whipping a horse that's already running as fast as it can.

  We've just got to do something about late orders. Nothing in

  this plant ships until it's expedited. We've got stacks and stacks of

  inventory out there. We release the materials on schedule, but

  nothing comes out the far end when it's supposed to.

  That's not uncommon. Just about every plant I know of has

  expeditors. And you walk through just about any plant in Amer-

  ica about our size and you'll find work-in-process inventory on

  the same scale as what we have. I don't know what it is. On the

  one hand, this plant is no worse than most of the ones I've seen—

  and, in fact, it's better than many. But we're losing money.

  If we could just get our backlog out the door. Sometimes it's

  like little gremlins out there. Every time we start to get it right,

  they sneak around between shifts when nobody is looking and

  they change things just enough so everything gets screwed up. I

  swear it's got to be gremlins.

  Or maybe I just don't know enough. But, hell, I've got an

  engineering degree. I've got an MBA. Peach wouldn't have

  named me to the job if he hadn't thought I was qualified. So it

  can't be me. Can it?

  Man, how long has it been since I started out down there in

  industrial engineering as a smart kid who knew everything—

  fourteen, fifteen years? How many long days have there been

  since then?

  I used to think if I worked hard I could do anything. Since

  the day I turned twelve I've worked. I worked after school in my

  old man's grocery store. I worked through high school. When I

  was old enough, I spent my summers working in the mills around

  here. I was always told that if I worked hard enough it would pay

  off in t
he end. That's true, isn't it? Look at my brother; he took

  the easy way out by being the first born. Now he owns a grocery

  store in a bad neighborhood across town. But look at me. I

  worked hard. I sweated my way through engineering school. I

  got a job with a big company. I made myself a stranger to my wife

  and kids. I took all the crap that UniCo could give me and said,

  E.M. Goldratt

  The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

  Captured by Plamen T.

  26

  "I can't get enough! Give me more!" Boy, am I glad I did! Here I am, thirty-eight years old, and I'm a crummy plant manager!

  Isn't that wonderful? I'm really having fun now.

  Time to get the hell out of here. I've had enough fun for one

  day.

  E.M. Goldratt

  The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

  Captured by Plamen T.

  27

  3

  I wake up with Julie on top of me. Unfortunately, Julie is not

  being amorous- she is reaching for the night table where the digi-

  tal alarm clock says 6:03 A.M. The alarm buzzer has been droning

  for three minutes. Julie smashes the button to kill it. With a sigh,

  she rolls off of me. Moments later, I hear her breathing resume a

  steady pace; she is asleep again. Welcome to a brand new day.

  About forty-five minutes later, I'm backing the Mazda out of

  the garage. It's still dark outside. But a few miles down the road

  the sky lightens. Halfway to the city, the sun rises. By then, I'm

  too busy thinking to notice it at first. I glance to the side and it's

  floating out there beyond the trees. What makes me mad some-

  times is that I'm always running so hard that—like most other

  people, I guess—I don't have time to pay attention to all the daily

  miracles going on around me. Instead of letting me eyes drink in

  the dawn, I'm watching the road and worrying about Peach. He's

  called a meeting at headquarters for all the people who directly

  report to him—in essence, his plant managers and his staff. The

  meeting, we are told, is to begin promptly at 8:00 A.M. The funny

  thing is that Peach is not saying what the meeting is about. It's a

  big secret—you know: hush-hush, like maybe there's a war on or

  something. He has instructed us to be there at eight and to bring

  with us reports and other data that'll let us go through a thor-

  ough assessment of all the division's operations.

  Of course, all of us have found out what the meeting is about.

  At least we have a fairly good idea. According to the grapevine,

  Peach is going to use the meeting to lay some news on us about

  how badly the division performed in the first quarter. Then he's

  going to hit us with a mandate for a new productivity drive, with

  targeted goals for each plant and commitments and all that great

  stuff. I suppose that's the reason for the commandment to be

  there at eight o'clock on the button with numbers in hand; Peach

  must've thought it would lend a proper note of discipline and

  urgency to the proceedings.

  The irony is that in order to be there at such an early hour,

  half the people attending will have had to fly in the night before.

  Which means hotel bills and extra meals. So in order to an-

  E.M. Goldratt

  The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

  Captured by Plamen T.

  28

  nounce to us how badly the division is doing, Peach is going to

  pay out a couple of grand more than he would have had to pay if

  he'd begun the meeting an hour or two later.

  I think that Peach may be starting to lose it. Not that I sus-

  pect him of drifting toward a breakdown or anything. It's just

  that everything seems to be an over-reaction on his part these

  days. He's like a general who knows he is losing the battle, but

  forgets his strategy in his desperation to win.

  He was different a couple of years ago. He was confident. He

  wasn't afraid to delegate responsibility. He'd let you run your

  own show—as long as you brought in a respectable bottom line.

  He tried to be the "enlightened" manager. He wanted to be open

  to new ideas. If some consultant came in and said, "Employees

  have to feel good about their work in order to be productive,"

  Peach would try to listen. But that was when sales were better and

  budgets were flush.

  What does he say now?

  "I don't give a damn if they feel good," he says. "If it costs an extra nickel, we're not paying for it."

  That was what he said to a manager who was trying to sell

  Peach on the idea of a physical fitness center where employees

  could work out, the premise being that everyone would do better

  work because healthy employees are happy employees, etc. Peach

  practically threw him out of his office.

  And now he's walking into my plant and wreaking havoc in

  the name of improving customer service. That wasn't even the

  first fight I've had with Peach. There have been a couple of oth-

  ers, although none as serious as yesterday's. What really bugs me

  is I used to get along very well with Peach. There was a time when

  I thought we were friends. Back when I was on his staff, we'd sit

  in his office at the end of the day sometimes and just talk for

  hours. Once in a while, we'd go out and get a couple of drinks

  together. Everybody thought I was brown-nosing the guy. But I

  think he liked me precisely because I wasn't. I just did good work

  for him. We hit it off together.

  Once upon a time, there was a crazy night in Atlanta at the

  annual sales meeting, when Peach and I and a bunch of wackos

  from marketing stole the piano from the hotel bar and had a

  sing-along in the elevator. Other hotel guests who were waiting

  for an elevator would see the doors open, and there we'd be,

  midway through the chorus of some Irish drinking song with

  E.M. Goldratt

  The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

  Captured by Plamen T.

  29

  Peach sitting there at the keyboard tickling those ivories. (He's a

  pretty good piano player, too). After an hour, the hotel manager

  finally caught up with us. By then, the crowd had grown too big

  for the elevator, and we were up on the roof singing to the entire

  city. I had to pull Bill out of this fight with the two bouncers

  whorn the manager had enlisted to kill the party. What a night

  that was. Bill and I ended up toasting each other with orange

  juice at dawn in some greasy-spoon diner on the wrong end of

  town.

  Peach was the one who let me know that I really had a future

  with this company. He was the guy who pulled me into the pic-

  ture when I was just a project engineer, when all I knew was how

  to try hard. He was the one who picked me to go to headquarters.

  It was Peach who set it up so I could go back and get my MBA.

  Now we're screaming at each other. I can't believe it.

  By 7:50, I'm parking my car in the garage under the UniCo

  Building. Peach and his division staff occupy three floors of the

  building. I get out of the car and get my briefcase from the trunk.

&nb
sp; It weighs about ten pounds today, because it's full of reports and

  computer printouts. I'm not expecting to have a nice day. With a

  frown on my face, I start to walk to the elevator.

  "Al!" I hear from behind me.

  I turn; it's Nathan Selwin coming toward me. I wait for him.

  "How's it going?" he asks.

  "Okay. Good to see you again," I tell him. We start walking

  together. "I saw the memo on your appointment to Peach's staff.

  Congratulations.''

  "Thanks," he says. "Of course, I don't know if it's the best place to be right now with everything that's going on."

  "How come? Bill keeping you working nights?"

  "No, it's not that," he says. Then he pauses and looks at me.

  'Haven't you heard the news?"

  "What about?"

  He stops suddenly and looks around. There is nobody else

  around us.

  "About the division," he says in a low voice.

  I shrug; I don't know what he's talking about.

  "The whole division is going to go on the block," he says.

  Everybody on Fifteen is crapping in their pants. Peach got the

  word from Granby a week ago. He's got till the end of the year to

  E.M. Goldratt

  The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

  Captured by Plamen T.

  30

  improve performance, or the whole division goes up for sale. And

  I don't know if it's true, but I heard Granby specifically say that if

  the division goes, Peach goes with it."

  "Are you sure?"

  Nathan nods and adds, "Apparently it's been in the making

  for quite a while."

  We start walking again.

  My first reaction is that it's no wonder Peach has been acting

  like a madman lately. Everything he's worked for is in jeopardy.

  If some other corporation buys the division, Peach won't even

  have a job. The new owners will want to clean house and they're

  sure to start at the top.

  And what about me; will I have a job? Good question, Rogo.

  Before hearing this, I was going on the assumption that Peach

  would probably offer me some kind of position if the plant is shut

  down. That's usually the way it goes. Of course, it may not be

  what I want. I know there aren't any UniWare plants out there in

  need of a manager. But I figured maybe Peach would give me my

  old staff job back—although I also know it's already been filled

  and I've heard that Peach is very satisfied with the guy. Come to