The Race

On the surface, Eli Goldratt and Bob Fox are a marked contrast in background and styles. Goldratt was born and raised in Israel during a tumultuous period in the Middle East and has fought in three wars. He left a promising academic life after receiving a doctorate in physics from Bar Han University to launch a seemingly Don Quixote venture. Even though he never worked in a plant or even visited one in the U.S., Goldratt's goal was to teach Western manufacturers how to schedule their operations.

Appearing in an open-collared white shirt without coat or tie, Goldratt is often described as brash, evangelistic and a killer of sacred cows. Nevertheless, he has in seven short years become an internationally recognized thought leader in manufacturing. His OPT logistical system (small OPT) and the OPT process of ongoing improvement (big OPT) are revolutionizing how manufacturing is conducted. Goldratt's developments have been adopted by more than 100 manufacturers and are already being taught at more than 50 colleges and universities in the Western world. Some schools are even devoting entire courses to his inventions. His first book, The Goal, a novel of business, has become an underground bestseller in board rooms, colleges and the factory floor and is already available in eight languages.

Bob Fox's background was much more conventional starting in the security of a small town in the heartland of Nebraska. After studying engineering and business at Notre Dame and Carnegie Mellon Universities, Bob began his industrial career as a foreman. Progressing rapidly through a series of production and engineering positions, he served as a Vice President of Manufacturing. After a stint as General Manager, he returned to and became a partner at Booz, Allen and Hamilton, the internationally recognized management consulting firm. An articulate, polished, professional speaker, he lectured frequently before professional and industry groups.

The emergence of Japanese industrial competition caused Goldratt's and Fox's paths to first cross, and eventually linked their energies to find better solutions for Western manufacturers. Fox was one of the first to publicly describe the techniques and success of Japanese manufacturers. He recognized that Goldratt's computerized OPT logistical system, although developed totally independent, was remarkedly similar to the manual Japanese Kanban approach. Joining forces with Goldratt and other colleagues at Creative Output , they have successfully challenged such manufacturing sacred cows as the use of efficiencies, variances and standard costs. More recently, they have expanded OPT into a process of ongoing improvement that many believe is superior to the Japanese Just-in-Time approach.

On the surface, Goldratt's and Fox's similarities seem to be confined to a love of fine cigars, but they share an intensive drive and deep conviction that the growing dangerous imbalance of manufacturing capabilities between the West and East must and can be changed. In conjunction with a number of major companies and universities, they are now building the Abraham Y. Goldratt Institute to develop the know-how to change this imbalance.

1. Are We Losing Our Dominant Position?
2. The Drive for Quality
3. Product Life Cycles Shrink
4. Automating Our Plants
5. Logistics to Speed Up the Flow of Materials
6. Inventory Turns Measure Performance
7. The Race for a Competitive Edge is Accelerating — Rapidly
8. Where to Start — Sorting Out the Alphabet Soup
9. What is the Goal of the Race?
10. "Making Money" — How Do We Measure It?
11. Are the Cost Bridge Fatally Flawed?
12. The Cost Concept Blocks Better Quality
13. High Inventory Turns aren't Cost Justified
14. Throughput-Inventory-Operating Expense — A Better Bridge
15. T-I-OE and the Bottom Line
16. Inventory and the Carrying Charge Channel
17. Who is Right — Our Financial Systems or the Japanese?
18. The Six Competitive Edge Issues
19. A High Inventory Environment
20. A Low inventory Environment
21. Deming Taught the Japanese Quality
22. Low Inventory Equals High Quality
23. Product Engineering and Inventory — What's the Relationship?
24. Low Inventory, Quicker New Product Introduction
25. Murphy — Villain or Excise?
26. High Inventory — The Real Cause of Overtime
27. Does the End-of-the-Month Syndrome Cause the Purchase of Even More Excess Capacity?
28. High Inventory Means Extra Equipment, Space and Investment
29. Is Improving Due-Date Performance Beyond a Plant's Control?
30. Low Inventory — The Key to More Accurate Forecasts
31. Short Lead Times — A Key to Survival?
32. Inventory Levels and Production Lead Times are the Same Thing
33. Inventory and Future Throughput
34. Why Inventory is a Second-Class Citizen
35. What is Synchronized Manufacturing?
36. Spreading Troops Mean High Inventories
37. Rearranging the Soldiers Reduces Spreading
38. A Good Idea — But Too Expensive
39. Drummers and Screaming Sergeants
40. Earmuffs on the Soldiers
41. "Keep the Workers Busy"
42. Could High Efficiencies Everywhere Be Bad?
43. Can Workers March to Your Drumbeat?
44. Rope the Soldiers Together Like Mountain Climbers
45. Predetermined Buffers Make It Work
46. The Western Way — Just-in-Case
47. Just-in-Time or Just-in-Case — The Rope or the Ax?
48. A New System — DBR
49. Drums, Buffers and Ropes
50. Devising a Drum-Buffer-Rope System
51. Assuring High Due-Date Performance
52. Universal Application
53. Locating the Constraints
54. How to Beat the Drum
55. Four Conditions That Complicate Scheduling
56. DBR Buffers Clash With Our Culture
57. DBR Ropes Require a Change in Management Behavior
58. DBR and a Process of Ongoing, Focused Improvement
59. Understanding Time Buffers
60. Buffer Content — Constantly Changing
61. Actual Buffers Should Differ from Planned Buffers
62. Managing the Time Buffers
63. Holes in the Buffers
64. Calculating a Disruption Factor
65. The Pareto Principle
66. Making Sense of the Alphabet Soup
67. Reducing Disruptions to Gain a Competitive Edge
68. Dealing with Bottlenecks
69. The Productivity Flywheel
70. There Is No Finish Line

• Appendix A: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
• Appendix B: Can You Win at Managing The Productivity Game
• Appendix C: How to Win at Managing The Productivity Game
  

Nice overheads with explaining texts. To be used together with The Goal.

Can't understand why I paid for this, as the authors claims that this is taught in a number of MBA courses around the world (and thereby would be found in variants all over the world wide web [not that I've ever seen very many, and I've tried]). If you're a TOC convert, buy it, otherwise it is a waste of money.