The Goal

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over to the assembly line without having to turn sideways to squeeze between the stacks and bins of inventory. I thought it was good. But now this happens.

"Mr. Rogo," says Fran through the intercom speaker. "I've got him on the line."

I pick up the phone. "Jonah? Hi. Listen, we've got trouble here."

"What's wrong?" he asks.

After I tell him the symptoms, Jonah asks what we've done since his visit. So I relate all the history to him-putting Q.C. in front of the bottlenecks, training people to give special care to bottleneck parts, activating the three machines to supplement the NCX-10, the new lunch rules, assigning certain people to work only at the bottlenecks, increasing the batch sizes going into heat- treat, implementing the new priority system in the plant...

"New priority system?" asks Jonah.

"Right," I say, and then I explain about the red tags and green tags, and how the system works.

Jonah says, "Maybe I'd better come have another look."

I'm at home that night when the phone rings.

"Hi," says Julie's voice when I answer.

"Hi."

"I owe you an apology. I'm sorry about what happened on Friday night," she says. "Stacey called me here. Al, I'm really embarrassed. I completely misunderstood."

"Yeah, well... it seems to me there's a lot of misunder- standing between us lately," I say.

"All I can say is I'm sorry. I drove down thinking you'd be glad to see me."

"I would have been if you'd stayed," I say. "In fact, if I'd known you were coming, I would have come home after work."

"I know I should have called," she says, "but I was just in one of those moods."

"I guess you shouldn't have waited for me," I tell her.

She says, "I just kept thinking you'd be home any minute. And the whole time, your mother kept giving me the evil eye. Finally she and the kids went to bed, and about an hour later I fell asleep on the sofa and slept until you came in."

"Well... you want to be friends again?"