Author E.M. Goldratt recently passed away. For those interested in operations management, I highly recommend reading his work. I read his first book, The Goal, a few years ago and it remains one of my favourite books of all time.
The book is a novel, but what makes it interesting is not the story itself but the operations concepts the story helps bring to life. The main character runs a factory that is going out of business thanks to conventional concepts of efficiency and productivity.
With the help of a consultant, however, the manager learns a number of unconventional and counter-intuitive concepts that slowly help improve overall performance. It's a quick read, so much so that I recently read the book again since I enjoyed it so much the first time.
Inspired by this book, I also read the sequel, It's Not Luck. While the newer book does introduce a number of interesting new concepts, it's not nearly as illustrative as The Goal in my opinion.
Have you read these books? What did you think?
Love the goal. Read it as part of my MBA reading material. Certainly helped me understand how to do better in our own company's operations.
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