The Goal: a process of Ongoing Improvement

DW: How quickly did this improvement occur?
RL: Three months. Now you can understand why I’m trying to build a
consulting practice around TOC.
Interview with Eli Goldratt continued . . .
DW: I’d say almost everybody I’ve talked to who has read 
The Goal
agrees with its messages. It also seems clear that many readers believe
TOC to be founded on solid common sense. So why doesn’t everybody
implement TOC right away? Is it because TOC demands that cost
accounting be discarded? Do the financial managers block the
implementations?
EG: Not at all. The notion that financial managers try to protect cost
accounting is completely false. As a matter of fact, financial managers are the
only type of managers that knew, much before TOC, the fallacies of cost
accounting. Moreover, in almost any company, the VP of finance is one of
the few managers who sees the overall picture and is extremely frustrated to
witness so many devastating local optima decisions which do not view the
organization as a whole. What we see in reality is the exact opposite; the
financial managers rarely oppose TOC. On the contrary, in many (if not
most) implementations, they are the driving force.
DW: That’s hard to believe. Can I interview such an enlightened
financial manager?
EG: As many as you want. As I said, such financial managers are the norm
rather than the exception.

---

Interview 
with 
Craig 
Mead
, 
Book
Manufacturing
Vice President Finance, Thomson-Shore, Dexter, Michigan.
DW: Tell me about Thomson-Shore.
CM: We’re in Dexter, Michigan, just outside Ann Arbor. Approximately
40% of our customers are university presses. We would be considered a
short-run printer, meaning we print runs of between 200 and 10,000 copies.
We’re also an ESOP company—98% of the stock is owned by the
employees. We’ve had as many as 300 employees. Right now we’re at 280.