OK, so I’m 20 years late in reviewing this book but I’ve found it and read it now. No harm done, then! This book was first published in 1984 and this review relates to the third edition published in 2000

Quite simply, this is a novel and a form of text book all at the same time. The odd point is that basically it works both as a novel and as an introduction to the Theory of Constraints, Throughput, Cost Accounting, bottlenecks and a whole lot more.

If you are not familiar with this book them you might wonder how on earth a novel on the theory of constraints can be anything other than, well, let’s say, odd: so read it! Eli Goldratt is a serious academic, practitioner and author and he has put together the story of a man, Alex Rogo (how do you pronounce that surname?) with a factory to save from closure. Alex runs into an old university chum, Jonah, who possesses amazing insights into a situation he has never seen when he unloads his burden of what’s wrong with his factory.

Jonah is a physicist now and he uses the Socratic method to walk Alex and his team through their nightmares. The what? Jonah knows all the answers, honest he does, but he refuses simply to tell Alex what to do: he’s a successful consultant who does have the time for hand holding anyway. What Jonah does is to get Alex to appreciate his problems and then work his way through them until he finds the solution. Great: it works very well and Alex and his team do work their way through their problems very successfully. Actually, that’ getting a bit ahead of the game because the final fifth or sixth of the book has the characters reviewing their successes and failures and they find that they didn’t do everything as well as they might have.

I have to say that you probably do need to have a reason to learn at least something about the theory of constraints and so on to want to read this book but it has sold more than three million copies so far. What would draw the ordinary reader into this novel is the private life that Alex has then hasn’t then has again after a struggle: faint heart never won fair lady, don’t forget.

I would like to think that if I ever wrote a novel about cost accounting or the Excel Spreadsheeter, it would be as good and as meaningful as this.

How about this for an opening line, if I might be so bold as to steal it from page 307 of The Goal:

As a matter of fact, I started to have a very good guideline; if it comes from cost accounting it must be wrong.

So, Goldratt’s a successful author, consultant and anti cost accountant so he must have a fair point. Any cost accountant worth his salt knows why Goldratt would think like that and would have to hold up his hand and say, ‘It’s a fair cop, officer.’

The essence of the book, then? Well, there are two threads to it that run in parallel to each other.

Thread one is the factory and the solution to its problem. How our hero not only turns the factory's fortunes around; but those of the whole group. I liked this part as Goldratt built some good and credible characters and took away the potential for building cheesy never get it wrong types. There are some incidents where mistakes are made, there are people making inaccurate assessments and, yes, mistakes.

Thread two is Alex's home life and his wife's reaction to it. Alex is living with his family in home town ... it's not his wife's home town and since they moved there relatively recently, she hasn'tmade many friends and, to be frank, doesn't look as if she's likely to. Out of the blue for Alex, she walks away from him, leaving him with the children.

It's a difficult thing for a woman to walk away like that and I don't think a woman writer would have made Alex's wife do that: men are feral and have less of a problem ... Goldratt got that part wrong, I'd say.

Still, so as not to give anything away and drag out the review too much, there is much happiness by the end of the book.

The factory may be saved; a marriage may be saved; indeed, a company may be saved.

And all because of the theory of constraints!

As I was readind this book, I turned into a salesmen and told a number of people that they ought to buy it and I had a success rate of around 50%. No commission came my way, however! Mr Goldratt ...

If you're in business and commerce, buy this book: practitioners and students will both benefit from it.

Duncan Williamson
30 April 2005