The Goal

Alex drives home, then immediately calls Julie at her parents’ house. He offers to take her on a date, like the ones they went on before having children. She agrees. The next morning at work, the advisory team gives Alex an update on how his new plan has been working out. They give Mario, one of the foremen, their list of priorities, but the system quickly disintegrates. Alex finds the NCX-10 is not running, and Mario claims to not have materials. He does have materials, but not for the first order on the priority list. Alex tells him to move on the next, annoyed at his lack of common sense. Alex and his team develop a visual guide for their priority list: orders will have green or red tags, and the red tags will get priority. If one red tag order cannot be completed at that moment, a worker may move on to another red tag, but not to a green tag. The tags will also have numbers, and workers “should always work on the materials with the lowest number” (178). Alex picks up Julie for their date. 

A week later, the team reviews their progress. Though their number of processed orders has risen, Alex is still not satisfied. He asks the team to consider Jonah’s other suggestions and come up with recommendations. Alex works with the quality control manager on a problem: “after parts exit the bottleneck, they tend to look almost identical to parts going into the bottleneck” (181). Thus, some parts are treated twice, which is unnecessary. Alex decides to affix yellow tape to parts that have exited the bottlenecks. Bob calls Alex down to the loading dock. There, Alex sees Bob with an ancient machine called the Zmegma. Bob explains that the Zmegma, when used in conjunction with two other machines, can do the same work at the NCX-10. By using both, they can double their production abilities. 

Alex reflects on his date with Julie, which went well. Ted Spencer, a foreman, asks Alex to keep Ralph Nakamura off his back and away from the work area. When Alex asks about it, Ralph explains that he only wanted accurate records of the time parts spent in heat treat. Ralph discovered that the heat treated parts are not being moved efficiently—they were still in the furnace hours after the treatment was complete. Bob tells them both that the issue is a lack of tasks for the heat treat workers to do while the furnace is running, but Alex decides there should be someone there “standing by” (189) at all times. The next day, Bob approaches Alex with a set of recommendations: dedicating a machinist to the NCX-10, stationing workers at the heat treat at all times, activating the Zmegma for one shift a day, and outsourcing some of the heat treat parts to other plants. Alex agrees.

Later, Alex discovers that the heat treat furnace is still working on very small batches, as some parts are very small and are treated in small numbers. Alex advises the foreman to treat parts as they’re ready—it’s OK to have different parts treated at the same time, as long as they remain sorted. Bob learns that the only reason so many parts are being heat treated in the first place is because of an old decision by plant managers, who tried to “speed up the processing” (193) of certain parts by making them thinner. This increases efficiency on paper, but made the parts brittle, which necessitated heat treating. Alex marvels at the fact that he will “reduce the efficiency of some operations and make the entire plant more effective” (194). 

Things are starting to look up for Alex’s plant. The plant has had a “twelve percent net decline in work-in-progress inventory” (195) and Alex and his team celebrate with champagne. He receives a call from Bill Peach, who congratulates him on pushing orders through faster. After a night of drinking, Stacey drives a very drunk Alex back home. As she walks him to the door, he falls on top of her. Just then, Julie, who has decided to return home, opens the front door. She sees them, and angrily accuses Alex of “coming home drunk with some floozy” (198). Alex tries to explain, but Julie leaves. When Alex gets to the plant on Monday, Stacey apologizes for the incident, then informs Alex that the “bottlenecks have spread” (199). There are now new machines that cannot keep up with demand, and Alex calls Jonah to find out why. Jonah agrees to visit the plant again.

That night, Julie calls. Stacey has talked to her, and Julie feels terrible about the assumptions she made. Alex asks to take Julie out on another date. She agrees.