Book Reviews

Regaining Competitiveness:
Putting The Goal To Work

By Mokshagunndam L. Srikanth and Harold E. Cavallaro, Jr.

Reviewed by Steve Buchwald, CIRM

The uniqueness of this book is in its presentation. Although it is a text book on how to apply the concept of Synchronous Manufacturing that Goldratt alluded to in The Goal, it has included as appendices a summary narrative of the Goal to accompany each chapter.

By now almost everyone in the manufacturing arena has read or has heard of The Goal. It is not unusual to be in a meeting or in a general conversation and here a reference to Herbie, Jonah, or Alex. However, you can now read a book on putting The Goal's concepts to work even if you haven't read The Goal. By taking the time to read the accompanying appendices you will in essence be reading two books at the same time. If you have already read The Goal this will be a great review. If you haven't yet read The Goal these appendices will expose you to the meat of the ideas discussed in it.

In addition to the appendices, this book contains "Action Items" within each chapter. As the authors state, "A book written without a detailed knowledge of your business, your processes and products, your organization and your strategies cannot be expected to provide a detailed answer [to your specific application] questions." Therefore, the best way to get the maximum benefit from the Synchronous Manufacturing concepts discussed here is to actual work through the action items.

Bottlenecks and Non-Bottlenecks, Synchronization and Balancing, Global Goals and Local Optimization, Inventory and Buffer Stock, and DBR are just a few of the concepts explained and outlined in this book. In addition the financial tool, Throughput Accounting, which is often linked directly with Synchronous Manufacturing is demonstrated. Throughput Accounting is a simplified financial reporting tool that utilizes three key measurements: Throughput, Inventory, and Operating Expense.

If you are dedicated to the use of these concepts the authors have included two additional appendices. The first of these appendices is The Production Dice Game developed by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt. The dice game is designed to help you understand the root causes of problems such as too much inventory or missed shipped dates. The second of these appendices is Setting the Production Batch Size. Here the authors discuss the idea of the Production and the Transfer batch and argue that the two should most often not be the same.

If you are interested in how to put the ideas of The Goal to work in your particular environment I suggest you pick up a copy of this book immediately. This book does not pretend to be a push button solution, it is well written and it will provide you a road map and a thinking process that will be well worth your investment.

Good reading!