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Rogo’s team achieves several major milestones and celebrates in response. Julie shows up, jumps to conclusions, and runs away from her problems as usual. Jonah returns to provide more guidance at the plant.

Highlights

“The bottlenecks have spread.”

In this re-reading, I found this line confusing. Cells at Rogo’s plant are producing out of cadence with the constraint, creating interim bottlenecks. This is a somewhat absurd situation – why would anyone do that? Perhaps it is an indication of how much wisdom has been spread since The Goal was first published.

Page by Page

P195 – “Here’s to a new plant record in shipments of product,” he says.

“Not only did we ship more product,” says Stacey, “but, having just calculated our inventory levels, I am pleased to report that between last month and now, we’ve had a twelve percent net decline in work-in-process inventory.”

P196 – “The reason I called is I know how I’m always on your case when things go wrong, Al, so I just wanted to tell you thanks from me and Jons for doing something right,” says Peach.

P197 – “You bastard!”

P198 – “Look, why don’t I talk to her.”

Often times the messenger is as important as the message.

P199 – “The bottlenecks have spread.”

P200 – If the demand on another work center has gone above one hundred percent, then we’ve created a new bottleneck.

Last week, for the first time since I’ve been at this plant, you could actually walk over to the assembly line without having to turn sideways to squeeze between the stacks and bins of inventory.

P201 – Jonah says, “Maybe I’d better come have another look.”