[If you haven’t read the original version of The Goal – it’s a better book. Here’s a chapter-by-chapter video summary, and a <60 second summary too.]

Professor Richard Silver brings in two guests to talk about the concept of ‘dosage’ for projects, which is really the ‘batch size’ or ‘amount of work done’ for a project. One guest worked in aircraft maintenance and the other in corrections – the concept of dosage helped improve the flow of both of their processes. The concept of dosage here is similar to that of batch size that Goldratt originally focused on in Chapter 28.

Best Quotes, Writing (Pages 89 – 96)

“Therefore, to improve the flow and the quality of our outcome, we need to go deeper and provide a larger dosage of work to each project before we move on to the next one.” Professor Richard Silver to the class, Page 89

Bill Meyers, local aviation company manager and graduate of the course, joins to give examples.

“Expiring tasks refer to the inspections and checks that need to be done to all these system and parts every fixed period of time or after a certain amount of flight hours.” – Page 90

“Now, each time we touch an airplane we give it a much bigger dosage of work than before; we check deeper and fix and replace things that are more than just the minimum.” Page 91

“Providing a larger dosage for each aircraft means that we perform not only the tasks that are currently expired, but also tasks that will expire in the next two weeks.” Page 92

“We used to think that maximizing the efficiency of each resource, technician, or work station would yield the best global results. But now we know that local efficiency does not translate into global efficiency. Our primary objective is to maximize flow.” Page 93

“Traditionally, the assumption was that we should supervise the offenders for a long period of time to ensure they didn’t slip. Each offender got personal one-hour visits every other week for a period of up to a year.” Sandra, Bill’s wife, works in corrections – Page 94

“But we kept playing with the idea and eventually we came up with the plan for a hundred hours of structured activities.” Sandra, Page 95

“And it all started when Bill told me what he learned in your class about dosage.” Sandra, Page 96