The Goal

42

I pop the top on one of the beers and go to work on the pizza.

The plant has the look of a landmark. It's as if it has always been there, as if it will always be there. I happen to know the plant is only about fifteen years old. And it may not be here as many years from now.

So what is the goal?

What are we supposed to be doing here?

What keeps this place working?

Jonah said there was only one goal. Well, I don't see how that can be. We do a lot of things in the course of daily operations, and they're all important. Most of them anyway... or we wouldn't do them. What the hell, they all could be goals.

I mean, for instance, one of the things a manufacturing orga- nization must do is buy raw materials. We need these materials in order to manufacture, and we have to obtain them at the best cost, and so purchasing in a cost-effective manner is very impor- tant to us.

The pizza, by the way, is primo. I'm chowing down on my second piece when some tiny voice inside my head asks me, But is this the goal? Is cost-effective purchasing the reason for the plant's existence?

I have to laugh. I almost choke.

Yeah, right. Some of the brilliant idiots in Purchasing sure do act as if that's the goal. They're out there renting warehouses to store all the crap they're buying so cost-effectively. What is it we have now? A thirty-two-month supply of copper wire? A seven- month inventory of stainless steel sheet? All kinds of stuff. They've got millions and millions tied up in what they've bought -and at terrific prices.

No, put it that way, and economical purchasing is definitely not the goal of this plant.

What else do we do? We employ people-by the hundreds here, and by the tens of thousands throughout UniCo. We, the people, are supposed to be UniCo's "most important asset," as some P.R. flack worded it once in the annual report. Brush off the bull and it is true the company couldn't function without good people of various skills and professions.

I personally am glad it provides jobs. There is a lot to be said for a steady paycheck. But supplying jobs to people surely isn't