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Oliver English Language Arts 11 18 December 2013 The Goal is Lean The Goal is a book that describes the life of Alex Rogo as he slowly turns his manufacturing plant from a money-losing failure into an amazingly profitable business while dealing with a struggling family life. He is helped by a friend he knew in college and is now a physicist to learn and understand how to make the changes that needed to be made within the plant. One thing his friend brought up was non-utilized talent. Non-utilized talent is basically this: where management makes changes to a system without consulting the people within the system to see if they want or even suggest the changes. One such case of non-utilized talent is Mike, a worker on the night-crew for the heat-treat oven. He had higher output than his daytime counterparts. When Alex found this out, he talked with Mike, and had him implement it in the daytime along with formal documentation of how Mike ran the heat-treat at a higher output level. What he did was run parts with similar requirements at the same time to fill the heat-treat so less time is wasted and its fill-amount is closer to capacity. Alexs character is this: nigh obsession and perseverance. He risked his family relations rather precariously when he was working to improve his plant. He thought logically though, and was willing to take the time to process the knowledge available to him. He exhibited fine leadership qualities which were obviously requirements of his position. His attitude varied depending on his frustration levels, but wasnt terrible considering the situation. Individual Interpretation Chart

Non-Utilized Talent (pg. 192) Mike had ideas that were not being used to the extent they should be. Mike, a night shift worker, was maximizing capacity in heat treat by putting similar parts into the oven. This was only happening on his shift. He was not being consulted for his ideas and therefore his talent was not being put to good use. He was asked by Alex to implement his method into the day shift, and his ideas were then written down formally to be used around the clock. Defects (pg. 157) Quality Assurance was placed after bottlenecks. Quality Assurance was placed after bottlenecks, meaning that bottlenecks were sometimes working on scrap parts. This was a waste of time and money for the company to fix mistakes. Alex fixed this by placing Quality Assurance before bottlenecks. Overproduction (pg. 306) Stacey orders extra products to be built to keep the bottlenecks at 100% capacity Creating products in excess, like when Stacey ordered unnecessary work on the bottlenecks to keep them at 100% capacity, is overproduction. Stacey stopped this right away after she figured out that it was in fact creating waste. Waiting (pg.238) Many parts were waiting for other subassemblies to complete final assembly. Alexs company was often waiting on parts for final assembly, which is defined as lost time. This was fixed by accurately timing out parts and maximizing bottlenecks to cut WIP and have orders done on time.