The Goal

Jonah visits the plant, and the team attempts to explain the spread of the bottlenecks. Jonah challenges their assumption, asking, “How do you know it’s really a bottleneck?” (203). Alex suggests that they expedite orders further, but Jonah cautions against it—they’ll only become reliant on expediting. Jonah explains that they are overusing certain machines and creating excess inventory. Alex realizes that “by running non-bottlenecks for efficiency, we’ve built inventories far in excess of demand” (209). They are not allowing the bottlenecks to determine the pace and need of the non-bottlenecks, and so have created machines that run with no purpose. The non-bottleneck must never “determine throughput for the system” (209). Non-bottlenecks cannot determine their own utilization—another constraint in the system must do that. Bob protests against slowing down non-bottlenecks to match bottlenecks, claiming this will lower efficiency rates. “So what?’” Jonah asks. Ralph understands what Jonah means, pointing out that making a machine or employee work isn’t the same as being able to profit from the work. Jonah agrees. Through their actions, the team has created bottlenecks. Jonah has a solution.