Following the lead of Alex Rogo. (Novel Solutions).

I should have gotten to it years earlier, when a friend first passed it on to me. It only was after a few copies of The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt (North River Press, 1985) were being circulated around AFS that I located my copy and threw it in my travel bag.

After a stranger in the Atlanta airport terminal struck up a discussion about the book, it occurred to me that it deserved more mileage than just my own casual read. A corporate-level engineering manager, he said he read it "about 30 times" and also had his staff at numerous plants pore over it. (He also gave me the title now making its way through all of their plants, which I'm adding to my "to-read" list.)

I admit I haven't been much of a book report guy since teachers stopped giving candy bars out for that sort of thing. But hey, we can use all the help we can get nowadays. This is a time when even the wildest idea deserves attention, when the butcher knife should be wielded to the sacred cow, when the status quo could be the most dangerous "decision" of all. When you break things down, the ability to compete depends on how well foundries think through current and future challenges.

Perhaps you've heard about the "One Book, One Chicago" program. The idea, based on a similar program launched in Seattle, is to bring the city together around one book (to date they've been To Kill a Mockingbird and Night) to create a dialog for city-wide learning. Because we consider it our job to offer information and sources to help the industry work better, we're presenting The Goal as the first book in MODERN CASTING's "Novel Solutions." With this, we will regularly highlight a book that contains a message or two that, if heeded, might result in ideas that could elevate the casting industry's position.

The Goal is a good nod for the first installment, and is not one of those boring MBA-type books. Rather, it's a novel about Alex Rogo, a plant manager who has three months to save his troubled manufacturing operation from closing. What he begins to find is that the emphasis on plant efficiency is delivering exactly the opposite result on the shop floor. He and his team begin to see things in a different light and set the path toward the plant's turnaround, and eventually an overhauling of organizational accounting and measurements.

What's unique is how the story is told, or isn't. Rather than the author barking out his theories, you see the problem and potential solutions in the same way it is presented at the plant--evolving and interdependent of other things. In a true team problem-solving mode, the group finds guidance in a gentlemanly Socrates-like scholar named Jonah, who offers only the right questions, not the answers.

While reading, I recalled many of the thoughts shared in the "Foundry Executives Viewpoint" article that appeared in our Guide to CastExpo edition (these "essays" will be shared in an upcoming web posting). In a context applicable to our own industry's current challenges, the book cites examples of how plant operations and marketing teamed up to make production a dominant force in sales.

Whether you count dollars, supervise others or make cores and molds, you'll find thought-provoking ideas in this book, which accurately depicts the obstacles of change in a plant environment, warts and all. In addition to seeing a model of how a collective "rallying around a crisis" provides the kind of ownership that could otherwise never be gained, the book offers many thought-provoking concepts that challenge conventional thinking. Among them are explanations that only three plant measurements actually matter, and what the true cost of a production bottleneck is (it's not what your cost accounting system tells you). Taking a cue from Jonah, that's all I'll say.

Times like these demand different responses, and if you're not a book-reader or seminar-goer, maybe it's time to gain a perspective from outside your foundry walls. The biggest indicator of today's smart manager is one who doesn't pretend to know all the answers. Knowing what he didn't know, and then tapping his team's common sense and creative thinking, was what worked for Alex Rogo.

Enter your comments on The Goal at www.moderncasting.com as well as make suggestions for future "Novel Solutions" selections. See the September issue for the next hook in the series.