By Dr Lisa Lang, TOCICO Certified Expert and developer of the Velocity Scheduling System
Last updated: September 1, 2026
Dr Lisa was named a “Manufacturing Champion” by Newsweek and the 2012 Manufacturing Trendsetter by USA Today for her work applying Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints in custom job shops.
The Goal book by Eliyahu Goldratt is a 1984 business novel that introduced Theory of Constraints – the management philosophy that every system’s performance is limited by a single constraint, and improving anything other than that constraint does not improve the system. Written as a factory-floor novel, it remains the most widely read book in manufacturing management more than 40 years later.
Key Takeaways from The Goal Book
- The Goal of any business is to make money – not efficiency, not quality, not market share. Every action that moves you closer to that goal is productive. Everything else is not.
- A balanced plant is a bankrupt plant – trying to run every resource at 100% efficiency creates excess inventory and longer lead times, not more output.
- The bottleneck dictates output – one hour lost at the constraint is one hour lost for the entire system. One hour saved at a non-constraint is a mirage.
- Cut batch sizes to cut lead times – smaller batches flow faster through the plant, reducing inventory and improving delivery performance.
- The 5 Focusing Steps (POOGI) – Identify the constraint, Exploit it, Subordinate everything else, Elevate if needed, Repeat. This is the process of ongoing improvement.
- Throughput Accounting replaces cost accounting – measure Throughput (T), Inventory (I), and Operating Expense (OE). Increasing T has far more impact than reducing I or OE.
The path to publishing The Goal book was difficult. In 1984 there 
were no business novels. Eliyahu Goldratt or Goldratt would tell a story about publishers passing on his book because it was a business book and a “love story”, and they did not know what shelf to put it on. In the account I heard, he said it took talking to over 30 publishers before finding one that would take the risk. He also explained that his co-author wanted to get paid a flat guaranteed fee for his work. This turned out to be a great thing for Eliyahu Goldratt and a big missed opportunity for Jeff Cox. The Goal is probably the most read business book of all t