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The Goal: A Business Graphic Novel

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Alex Rogo is a harried plant manager who has been given 90 days to save his failing factory. If he doesn't improve the plant's performance, corporate headquarters will close it down and hundreds of workers will lose their jobs. It takes a chance meeting with Jonah, a former professor, to help him break out of his conventional thinking and figure out what needs to be done. As Alex identifies the plant's problems and works with his team to find solutions, the reader gains an understanding of the fundamental concepts behind the Theory of Constraints. Visual and fun to read, The A Business Graphic Novel offers an accessible introduction to the Theory of Constraints concepts presented in The Goal , the business novel on which it was based. The Goal is widely considered to be one of the most influential business books of all time. A bestseller since it was first published in 1984, the business novel has sold over 7 million copies, been translated into 32 languages and is taught in colleges, universities, and business schools around the world. Named to Time magazine's list of the 25 Most Influential Business Management Books, it is frequently cited by executives as a favorite or must-read title.

130 pages, Paperback

First published August 8, 2017

242 people are currently reading
990 people want to read

About the author

Eliyahu M. Goldratt

36 books702 followers
Eliyahu Moshe Goldratt (Hebrew: אליהו משה גולדרט) was an educator, author, physicist, philosopher and business leader, but first and foremost, he was a thinker who provoked others to think. Often characterized as unconventional, stimulating, and “a slayer of sacred cows,” he urged his audience to examine and reassess their business practices with a fresh, new vision.

Dr. Goldratt is best known as the father of the Theory of Constraints (TOC), a process of ongoing improvement that identifies and leverages a system’s constraints in order to achieve the system’s goals. He introduced TOC’s underlying concepts in his business novel, The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, which has been recognized as one of the best-selling business books of all time. First published in 1984, The Goal has been updated three times and sold more than 7 million copies worldwide. It has been translated into 35 languages.

Heralded as a “guru to industry” by Fortune magazine and “a genius” by Business Week, Dr. Goldratt continued to advance the TOC body of knowledge throughout his life, building on the Five Focusing Steps (the process of ongoing improvement, known as POOGI) with TOC-derived tools such as Drum-Buffer-Rope, Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) and the Thinking Processes. He authored ten other TOC-related books, including four business novels: It’s Not Luck (the sequel to The Goal), Critical Chain, Necessary but Not Sufficient and Isn’t It Obvious? His last book, The Choice, was co-authored by his daughter Efrat Ashlang-Goldratt.

Born in Israel on March 31, 1947, Dr. Goldratt earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Tel Aviv University and a Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy from Bar-Ilan University. He is the founder of TOC for Education, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing TOC Thinking and TOC tools to teachers and their students, and Goldratt Consulting. In addition to his pioneering work in business management and education, Dr. Goldratt holds patents in a number of areas ranging from medical devices to drip irrigation to temperature sensors. He died on June 11, 2011, at the age of 64.

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289 (34%)
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134 (15%)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 83 reviews
Profile Image for Jonathan Noble.
23 reviews3 followers
August 19, 2017
I originally read The Goal as it was the book that the brilliant "The Phoenix Project" was based on. Before that, I had never read anything about manufacturing or process optimization, but it was very easy to see how this had become such a popular business book. As accessible as the original was, this new graphic novel makes it even more so, and is even faster to consume. The well-done illustrations set the scene brilliantly, and literally illustrate the lessons that Alex Rogo learns throughout the story. This book is nothing short of excellent.
Profile Image for Joseph R..
1,262 reviews19 followers
October 25, 2017
Based on the business novel of the same name, The Goal tells the story of a manufacturing plant that is behind on its deliveries and under threat from upper management. The bosses will close the plant if things don't improve in three months. Al Rogo, the plant manager, was brought in six months ago to solve the problems and now is under the gun. A chance run-in with a former mathematics teacher opens Rogo's eyes to new ways of thinking about business and organizing work flow at the factory to make the needed improvements. Rogo analyzes the plant's processes, identifies bottlenecks in the production line, and develops systems to maximize productivity. Since this is a "business novel," clearly the plans will work out with a happy ending for everyone.

The point of the story is to introduce the Theory of Constraints. The original novel was published in 1984 and started a revolution in the manufacturing industry. According to the theory, the purpose of a system needs to be properly identified. For example, the factory's purpose is not to build things but to deliver goods to customers, i.e. make money. Anything in the system process that is a constraint (an area with a set level of production or capacity) is identified. Then, the rest of the system is modified to use the constraint to its maximum level. In the novel, one constraint is a robotic machine that process 25 parts in an hour. The production point directly before it averaged 25 parts an hour but fluctuates from 19 to 32 parts. If the previous production point only delivers 19 parts for processing, then the robot that could process 25 an hour only processes 19 for that specific hour. The workers reorganized their work flow to guarantee the maximum flow to the robot, thus generating maximum output. Once the system's flow is improved, workers can look for ways to elevate the constraint. In the novel, the old machinery used before the robot is put back in service in order to supplement the robot. The final step is to identify any new constraints and refine the system.

The story part of this book is interesting. Plant manager Rogo has a home life that is effected by his work but also helps him to solve problems. He takes his son's scouts on a hike but has a hard time keeping the group together on the long trek because of one slow kid. After dividing up the slow kid's overloaded pack among other boys and putting the slow kid in the lead, the hike makes it to its destination on time and in good spirits. So the theory applies not just to manufacturing plants but also in many other areas. The story, while it is used as a framework within which to explain the Theory of Constraints, is interesting enough to make good reading while learning.

Highly recommended.
Profile Image for Santhosh Guru.
180 reviews52 followers
February 11, 2018
A quick primer into Theory of Constraints. Non fiction books driving one single point in reams of pages is sometimes tiresome. In a graphic novel like this I could easily understand the core concept even though manufacturing is an alien domain. I love this book specially in this format.
244 reviews1 follower
January 6, 2025
3/10. An extremely goobering "business graphic novel" that I had to read for school. The author's forward says "Nowadays, more and more people don't like to read books at all" which I don't like or agree with. The back cover has a review from Fortune Magazine comparing the main characters to "Obi-Wan Kenobi instructing Luke Skywalker on the use of the force" which is extremely hyperbolic and places too much value on this operations topic. The best part was the dad taking his kid's boy scout troop on a hike, even though it was only there so he could have a business epiphany. He also was having a small dispute with his wife due to both of them working insane hours, which I found to be a relatable trope, but that didn't go anywhere. I don't know what I was expecting, but I certainly didn't get it.
Profile Image for Rod Brown.
7,342 reviews281 followers
March 3, 2018
Though it was slightly more readable than I expected, this graphic novel about business management was still pretty darn dull.
Profile Image for Chris.
34 reviews
April 10, 2021
Insightful introduction to the theory of constraints (TOC), brilliantly contextualised into a graphical story.
Profile Image for Sandy.
79 reviews2 followers
February 13, 2019
A very good, if a bit cheesy, way to learn about the Theory of Constraints. The graphic novel introduction to the business concept is well done, and a quick read. I'm not interested in the nuts and bolts of running a factory, but the theory of constraints has fed into some concepts I am interested in (kanban, in particular) and this was an effective and easy introduction to the concept.

Also, I realize this is a fictionalized story intended solely to teach a business concept, but I have to ask: is Alex's marriage going to make it? There was a lot of strain there. I really feel like Alex needs to step it up and be a better husband and father and not just continue to spend hardly any time at home after he masters the Theory of Constraints and gets the inevitable promotion at the end of the book. For real: work life balance, man. Maybe that should be the next business lesson he learns.

I can only assume this book is absolutely a must-read if you're the harried plant manager of a failing and inefficient factory, as sometimes happens.

Three stars.
Profile Image for Noelle Snods.
113 reviews1 follower
January 7, 2024
work required reading. Hope to use some of these methodologies on the manufacturing processes I create.
23 reviews1 follower
February 25, 2018
I gave it a 5 because:
- It is an IIE classic
- The graphics are great
- It brought me a great deal of memories
- The concepts are still valid after these many years
247 reviews2 followers
June 10, 2023
We need more business books written in this style. I like the fable style which several do but this was also presented like a comic which was awesome. Made what could have a very dry topic an engaging and fun read.
Profile Image for Edward Dahllöf.
16 reviews3 followers
February 23, 2018
Condensed version of the goal, left out most of the fictional stories and boiled down to the important stuff.
Profile Image for John.
492 reviews412 followers
October 3, 2017
Great ideas, but the graphic novel form didn't really convey the theory of constraints as much as some recent simulations and videos you can find on YouTube . . .
Profile Image for Adilson Carvalho.
34 reviews
August 11, 2019
It's a great book to begin understanding the pull model system. Some elements don't get explained in-depth, but it is a fantastic start. I'll now begin to read The Goal, the original book that inspired this version.
Profile Image for Cherry.
147 reviews
February 18, 2023
Read this for my Operations class in business school. Easy to read, fine story, some randomness but got the points across just fine.
1 review2 followers
May 3, 2018
Fun and Educational

I never read the original book, so I will not try to compare the two. While I can't say which is better,I can say that I learned a lot and can see how this applies to many if not every area in life. Being in tech I am going to keep an eye out to apply the lessons from this book. Hopefully it'll make a positive difference for my coworkers in our everyday work.
Profile Image for Cheryl Boyd.
22 reviews1 follower
September 18, 2018
Confession: I thought I was buying the original version so I was surprised to find that I bought a business comic book. That being said, it was a quick, enjoyable read and I am confident I got the points of the book and finished it quicker. I have a better understanding of the theory of constraints. It has motivated me to think differently about problem solving.
Profile Image for Beth Bravo.
20 reviews
July 25, 2020
Very helpful for learning the concepts, but there was a disturbing lack of women in the book. There were only four women, one of which was a child and one was a secretary. None of the major decision makers or people in power were female. It was distracting and hopefully in future editions they could make the book more inclusive.
Profile Image for Chuck.
30 reviews15 followers
August 30, 2017
The graphic move is faster to read than the novel, but I missed the depth of character that the novel provided. This version is missing the characterization, and thus it's missing some of the soul of the original work.
Profile Image for Helen.
735 reviews106 followers
January 1, 2024
Even though I am not a "business book" reader type, and this graphic novel is about manufacturing problems specifically, I found this book tremendously interesting and exciting - even though the subject of the book was manufacturing some sort of (unknown) widget and the problems encountered by management thereof.

The book opens with the manager of a manufacturing division of a large corporation being informed by management that his division will be shut down unless he can solve various problems with production and thereby make the company more profitable.

The manager runs into one of his old b-school professors and confides his problems to him. The professor is a management guru. The entire book is how the guru's suggestions rescue the company, by changing the mentality of the management team around so that they focus on the so-called "Theory of Constraints." Rather than give the ending of the book away, I will leave it to the imagination of the reader of this review to figure out if the (it turns out) famous theory did manage to save the company and the scores of jobs of the people employed there.

I definitely recommend this graphic novel - which is interesting on many levels; as an exciting novel about the looming closure of the firm and the lengths to which the manager went to save it (and his own job) as well as a primer on the theory of constraints, which is interesting even to a casual reader who is not particularly concerned with industrial production issues. The black & white/grey tone art work was excellent - as was the text. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in a "realistic" change of pace in graphic novels!
Profile Image for Dana.
135 reviews3 followers
June 20, 2023
With starting a new position in supply chain, my boss gave me this book to get more familiar with the overarching themes that come with logistics.

I generally thought the book was alright. There was a cohesive story: Rogo needs to save his manufacturing plant by solving the various issues that are happening around the site. There are many moving parts and many departments with various stakes in various processes. I thought that most of the issues and solutions that were brought up were explained well. But there were some areas where it was very confusing: like Rogo adamantly saying that cost of labor should not be factored into the value of the produced item. That really threw me, as labor is always factored into the price of the product. I still don't get that. This kind of 'understanding roadblock' happened a bunch while reading this book, once towards the beginning with the labor-product value concept, and a bunch at the end, pertaining to non-bottlenecks. These roadblocks led to putting the book down, picking it up, rereading, restarting, etc. Overall, I think this is a great, easy way to get someone introduced to supply chain and logistics. I just wish the author spent more time explaining certain aspects in detail. Not everyone is well versed in logistics and not everyone will 'get it' with a single read through. Maybe it was the writers voice in the book. Maybe it was my own nuanced incomprehension. It felt like this was supposed to be a beginners book but it is not written for beginners.
89 reviews2 followers
January 15, 2021
Having not read the original I can't comment on it as an adaptation, but I can comment on how it helped me understand the theory of constraints... Which is, a bit 🤨.

I think I get the overall idea, that a system can only travel at the speed of its bottlenecks, but some of the finer points we're lost on me, although that might be because I'm not in manufacturing.

Interestingly, I have read the phoenix project, which is a spiritual successor to The Goal, only for the DevOps crowed, and it's funny just how familiar they are to each other.

I'm not sure I get the whole "business novel" thing, however. I found most of it to just me fluff, and in the way of learning the lessons - I'm going to assume this graphic novel adaptation helped to keep the fluff to a minimum, as I was able to read this in just three hours or so, whereas I'm sure the original novel would have taken far longer.

I'd also like to mention that the speach bubble placement made it difficult to understand the order in which you're meant to read them. It was inconsistent and confusing.

All in all, it might be worth borrowing from the library to read, but I'm not sure it's worth the £15 I paid for it.
Profile Image for Noah.
138 reviews
January 21, 2019
This is exactly the type of adaptation that Goldratt is looking for. He should be extremely proud of his son Efrat for bringing the knowledge of The Goal to a our attention lacking generation. Actually, I wouldn't call us attention defect, we're more attention optimizing. We don't like to be told superfluous information, just like the graphic medium does so well.
As for Goldratt's content, the most inspiring bit is that Jonah's jargon turns into commonplace terminology for operations experts at the plant. It is simple to see complexity turning into common sense after many epiphanies over "the goal". I am in my senior year of an Industrial Engineering B.S.E., and I can hear my professors as Jonah. I can also picture the situation as Al due from my experience as an intern at a machine shop. If this were a Spider-Man comic, Julie is Al's MJ, Al of course being Peter, and Jonah is Uncle Ben, Aunt May, and Yuri rolled into one.
Profile Image for Lori.
610 reviews5 followers
June 30, 2020
I hadn't read a business graphic novel before, so wasn't sure what to expect. I think the format worked well for getting the main points across in a semi-entertaining way. I haven't read the novel that this is based on, so don't have that to compare it to.

Noteworthy quotes:

"Productivity is meaningless unless you know what your goal is."

"There are three of them (measurements): throughput, inventory, and operational expense." (explained in more detail on p. 27-29)

"At first it looked like Herbie was the problem. But by redistributing his load and letting him set the pace, he became the solution."

"Here's what happened when the non-bottlenecks did more than the (machine) did: excess inventory, which is against the goal.... This monster of excess inventory didn't create itself. You did. And why? Because of the wrong assumption that workers must produce 100 percent of the time or you should get rid of them to "save" money."
Profile Image for Drew Dietz.
19 reviews2 followers
May 20, 2022
A business textbook turned graphic novel, utilizes comic book styles and characters to communicate content and themes of challenging underlying assumptions, problem solving, and adapting Dr. Goldratt’s theory of constraints within a supply chain, small business, marketing, project management, etc. The process of ongoing improvement is a Japanese practice called kaizen, meaning changing for the better or continuous improvement.

1. Identify the constraint(s).
2. Decide how to exploit the constraints(s).
3. Subordinate everything else to the above decision(s).
4. Elevate the constraint(s).
5. Go back to Step #1 (Warning: do not allow inertia to cause a system’s constraint).

*A constraint may be external or internal and could be a department, person/people, or even a policy.
Profile Image for Jeff Beckham.
35 reviews1 follower
November 3, 2019
A unique and entertaining way to read about business

This book uses a comic book framework to explain the theory of constraints. It’s based on a manufacturing plant but it applies to any business. You have to do the translation yourself though, and that’s my only nitpick. Working in marketing for a software company, we aren’t using machines to produce physical goods. But the core ideas still apply — you have to identifty the goal that represents success, pinpoint bottlenecks, and optimize them above all else. None of the ideas were revolutionary, but it was well worth spending 90 minutes to remind and refocus myself on these foundational ideas.
Profile Image for Chris.
317 reviews23 followers
October 29, 2022
A very accessible introduction to the theory of constraints. This graphic novel is an adaptation of a business novel written by Eliyaho Goldratt. Goldratt's idea was very influential, I gather. Basically in improving a business production, he focused on its throughput, the rate at which money is generated by sales rather than focusing on improving efficiency of each step along the way. The method relies on recognizing where key bottlenecks are and how they constrain throughput and adjusting your system around those constraints, and of course working to remove the constraints. An interesting short read.
Profile Image for Gustav Bertram.
34 reviews9 followers
October 15, 2019
I think this was an interesting attempt, but I don't think the information to be conveyed is particularly suited to the graphic novel medium.

Consider that the graphic novel converts a ~400pg book into a 130pg graphic novel with relatively sparse speech bubbles. It feels like the graphic novel tries to compress too much information into a small space, and as a result skims over (or doesn’t explain at all) most of the concepts it uses.

I do think that it has a much more positive portrayal of Julie Rogo than the original material.
3 reviews
May 22, 2024
I applaud the author for what they were trying to do here. Business books can often feel very inaccessible for a reader who is short on time or unaccustomed to long-format learning.

However there's probably a reason this hasn't been done before. The content leaves you wondering, "who was the target audience for this?" If you're interested in the topic you're likely a business student, at which point this won't go into enough depth to help you.

If you're not a business student, there's not enough content to hold your attention.
Profile Image for Cameron.
461 reviews33 followers
August 23, 2021
“Utilizing a resource means using it in a way that moves the system towards the goal.” The goal is to make money.
3.75 stars. I enjoyed this modernized update to a business efficiency classic. As a visual learner, the comic book approach made this quick, accessible and simple. My main issue was with the layout. The stacking and placement of speech bubbles was often confusing, making it hard to know what to read in order.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 83 reviews

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