The Goal

146

"And if that's the case?" asks Lou.

"I don't know," I tell him. "I guess the first thing to do is find out if we've got a bottleneck."

"So we go look for Herbie," says Ralph. "If he's out there." "Yeah, quick, before we talk ourselves to death," says Bob.

I walk into the conference room a few days later and there's paper everywhere. The main table is covered with computer print-outs and binders. Over in the corner, a data terminal has been installed; next to it, a printer is churning out even more paper. The wastebaskets are full. So are all the ashtrays. The litter of white styrofoam coffee cups, empty sugar packets and creamer containers, napkins, candy bar and cracker wrappers, and so on is scattered about. What has happened is the place has been turned into our headquarters in the search for Herbie. We have not found him yet. And we're getting tired.

Sitting at the far end of the main table is Ralph Nakamura. He and his data processing people, and the system data base they manage, are essential to the search.

Ralph does not look happy as I come in. He's running his skinny fingers through his thinning black hair.

"This isn't the way it's supposed to be," he's saying to Stacey and Bob.

"Ahh, perfect timing," says Ralph when he sees me. "Do you know what we just did?"

"You found Herbie?" I say.

Ralph says, "No, we just spent two and a half hours calculat- ing the demand for machines that don't exist."

"Why'd you do that?"

Ralph starts to sputter. Then Bob stops him.

"Wait, wait, wait a minute. Let me explain," says Bob. "What happened was they came across some routings which still listed some of the old milling machines as being part of the processing. We don't use them-"

"Not only don't we use them, just found out we sold them a year ago," says Ralph.

"Everybody down in that department knows those machines aren't there anymore, so it's never been a problem," says Bob.

So it goes. We're trying to calculate demand for every re- source, every piece of equipment, in the plant. Jonah had said a bottleneck is any resource which is equal to or less than the mar-