The Goal

113

Andy shakes the die in his hand for what seems like an hour. Everyone is yelling at him to roll. The die goes spinning onto the table. We all look. It's a six.

"All right!"

"Way to go, Andy!"

He takes six match sticks out of the box and hands them to Ben. I record a gain of+2.5 for him, which puts his score at 1.0 on the grid.

Ben takes the die and he too rolls a six. More cheers. He passes all six matches to Chuck. I record the same score for Ben as for Andy.

But Chuck rolls a three. So after he passes three matches to Dave, he still has three left in his bowl. And I note a loss of-0.5 on the chart.

Now Dave rolls the die; it comes up as a six. But he only has four matches to pass-the three that Chuck just passed to him and one from the last round. So he passes four to Evan. I write down a gain of +0.5 for him.

Evan gets a three on the die. So the lone match on the end of the table is joined by three more. Evan still has one left in his bowl. And I record a loss of-0.5 for Evan.

At the end of two rounds, this is what the chart looks like.

We keep going. The die spins on the table and passes from hand to hand. Matches come out of the box and move from bowl to bowl. Andy's rolls are-what else?-very average, no steady run of high or low numbers. He is able to meet the quota and then some. At the other end of the table, it's a different story.

"Hey, let's keep those matches coming."

"Yeah, we need more down here."

"Keep rolling sixes, Andy."

"It isn't Andy, it's Chuck. Look at him, he's got five."

After four turns, I have to add more numbers-negative numbers-to the bottom of the chart. Not for Andy or for Ben or for Chuck, but for Dave and Evan. For them, it looks like there is no bottom deep enough.

After five rounds, the chart looks like this:

"How am I doing, Mr. Rogo?" Evan asks me.

"Well, Evan... ever hear the story of the Titanic?"

He looks depressed.

"You've got five rounds left," I.tell him. "Maybe you can pull through."

"Yeah, remember the law of averages," says Chuck.

"If I have to wash dishes because you guys didn't give me enough matches..." says Evan, letting vague implications of threat hang in the air.

"I'm doing my job up here," says Andy.

"Yeah, what's wrong with you guys down there?" asks Ben.

"Hey, I just now got enough of them to pass," says Dave. "I've hardly had any before."

Indeed, some of the inventory which had been stuck in the first three bowls had finally moved to Dave. But now it gets stuck in Dave's bowl. The couple of higher rolls he had in the first five rounds are averaging out. Now he's getting low rolls just when he has inventory to move.

"C'mon, Dave, gimme some matches," says Evan.

Dave rolls a one.

"Aw, Dave! One match!"

"Andy, you hear what we're having for dinner tonight?" asks Ben.

"I think it's spaghetti," says Andy.

"Ah, man, that'll be a mess to dean up."

"Yeah, glad I won't have to do it," says Andy.

"You just wait," says Evan. "You just wait 'til Dave gets some good numbers for a change."

But it doesn't get any better.

"How are we doing now, Mr. Rogo?" asks Evan.

"I think there's a Brillo pad with your name on it."

"All right! No dishes tonight!" shouts Andy.

After ten rounds, this is how the chart looks...

I look at the chart. I still can hardly believe it. It was a bal- anced system. And yet throughput went down. Inventory went up. And operational expense? If there had been carrying costs on the matches, operational expense would have gone up too.

What if this had been a real plant-with real customers? How many units did we manage to ship? We expected to ship thirty-five. But what was our actual throughput? It was only twenty. About half of what we needed. And it was nowhere near