Quotes from Eliyahu M. Goldratt

So this is the goal: To make money by increasing net profit, while simultaneously increasing return on investment, and simultaneously increasing cash flow.

What you have learned is that the capacity of the plant is equal to the capacity of its bottlenecks," says Jonah.

I smile and start to count on my fingers: One, people are good. Two, every conflict can be removed. Three, every situation, no matter how complex it initially looks, is exceedingly simple. Four, every situation can be substantially improved; even the sky is not the limit. Five, every person can reach a full life. Six, there is always a win-win solution. Shall I continue to count?

utilizing" a resource means making use of the resource in a way that moves the system toward the goal. "Activating" a resource is like pressing the ON switch of a machine; it runs whether or not there is any benefit to be derived from the work it's doing.

Since the strength of the chain is determined by the weakest link, then the first step to improve an organization must be to identify the weakest link.

The entire bottleneck concept is not geared to decrease operating expense, it's focused on increasing throughput.

Putting it precisely, activating a resource and utilizing a resource are not synonymous.

For the ability to answer three simple questions: 'what to change?', 'what to change to?', and 'how to cause the change?' Basically what we are asking for is the most fundamental abilities one would expect from a manager.

Tell me how you measure me and I'll tell you how I will behave.

Four: Too many wasteful 'synchronization' meetings interrupted the actual work.

The minute you supply a person with the answers, by that very action you block them, once and for all, from the opportunity of inventing those same answers for themselves. If you want to go on an ego trip, to show how smart you are, give the answers. But if what you want is action to be taken, then you must refrain from giving the answers.

Well, I don't. Not absolutely. But adopting making money'' as the goal of a manufacturing organization looks like a pretty good assumption. Because, for one thing, there isn't one item on that list that's worth a damn if the company isn't making money.

More importantly, our software worked. I don't just mean that it didn't bump, or that it performed according to the written specifications, or that it was efficient in producing reports. It really worked

What I'm telling you is, productivity is meaningless unless you know what your goal is," he says.

They're measurements which express the goal of making money perfectly well, but which also permit you to develop operational rules for running your plant," he says. "There are three of them. Their names are throughput, inventory and operational expense.

What is the real goal? Nobody here has even asked anything that basic.

Alex, the goal is not to reduce operational expense by itself. The goal is not to improve one measurement in isolation. The goal is to reduce operational expense and reduce inventory while simultaneously increasing throughput," says Jonah.

productivity is the act of bringing a company closer to its goal. Every action that brings a company closer to its goal is productive. Every action that does not bring a company closer to its goal is not productive.

In order to significantly increase sales we have to increase the perception of value of the market for our products.

When a proto-type—a new initiative—doesn't work, we face two alternatives: one is to bitch about reality and the other is to harvest the gift it just gave us, the knowledge of what has to be corrected.

Bob comes into the office with a smear of grease on his white shirt over the bulge of his beer gut, and he's talking nonstop about what's going on with the breakdown of the automatic testing machines. "Bob," I tell him, "forget about that for now.

Jonah said there was only one goal. Well, I don't see how that can be. We do a lot of things in the course of daily operations, and they're all important. Most of them anyway . . . or we wouldn't do them. What the hell, they all could be goals.

A balanced plant is essentially what every manufacturing manager in the whole western world has struggled to achieve. It's a plant where the capacity of each and every resource is balanced exactly with demand from the market.

Okay, so why was the plant built in the first place? It was built to produce products. Why can't that be the goal? Jonah said it wasn't. But I don't see why it isn't the goal. We're a manufacturing company. That means we have to manufacture something, doesn't it? Isn't that the whole point, to produce products? Why else are we here?