Letter to anonymous olympian

प्यारे दोस्त,
तुम वहाँ अपने तंन-मन से सर्वश्रेष्ट की अपेक्षा कर रहे थे | प्रयाश प्रशंसनीय था , पर कुछ तथ्य जिससे तुम अग्यात होगे - जो जेयैवनिक और पर्यावर्णी आधारों से निर्धारित होते हैं - तुम उन लोगों के समीप आने से चूक गये , जो ओलिंपिक पूर्व-निर्धारित मुस्कानो के साथ ओलिंपिक पदकों से सुसज्जीत हो रहे थे |
जब तुम दौड़ रहे थे, तुम्हे ये अंदेशा भी नहीं रहा होगा कि कितने जोड़े आँख तुम्हे स्टेडियम या दूरदर्शन के मध्यम से तुम्हे देख रहे थे | मैं समझता हूँ - वे बहुत नहीं थे, जिनमे मेरी आँखे भी शामिल थीं |

मैने तुम्हे रेस के बाद देखा , तुम्हारे हताश चेहरे खोज रहें थे - आख़िर कहाँ चूक गये ? लंबे अभ्यास , अनुशासन , और खानपान के पश्चात - अब वो समय था जब तुम खेलगाँव को अलविदा कह रहे थे, मायूसी साथ थी|
उसके बाद तो ना मैने तुम्हे पहचानने की कोशिश की , ना ही वो कार ड्राइवर , जो तुम्हे हवाई अड्डे तक पहुँचाया, और ना ही वो ऑफीसर जो तुम्हारे पासपोर्ट जाँच कर तुम्हे अलविदा कर रहे थे |
और तुम्हारे टूटे मन को - क्या हुआ, क्या होता अगर... मगर.. - और जाने ऐसे दर्जनों नकारात्मक भाव अकेली यात्रा में परेशान कर रहे थे | टूटे सपनो के दर्द तुम्हे सोने भी कहाँ दे रहे थे ?
ऐसा भी क्या किया बोल्ट और फेल्प्स ने, जो मैं ना कर सका? मैने भी तो उतना ही प्रयाश किया था , जितना शायद उनलोगों ने किया था | फिर ..... फिर , मैं क्यूँ?  तुम सोच रहे थे |

पर मेरे प्यारे अग्यात दोस्त- मैं कहूँगा - क्या हुआ जो तुम पदक के बिन घर आए - तुम तो स्वयं ही विजयी थे | तुम्हारे बिन और तुम्हारे तरह उन हज़ारों के बिन - ना कोई बोल्ट होता ना ही कोई फेल्प्स |
क्योंकि तुमने अपनी बेहतरीन कोशिश की , पर असफल हो गये - वो वे बन सके जो आज हैं | ज़रा सोचो, किसी प्रति-स्फर्धा में सिर्फ़ तीन लोग लड़ रहें हों - स्वर्ण, रजत, और कान्श्य के लिए | क्या माजरा होगा- कौन दर्शक ठहरेगा वहाँ?
तुम्हारे प्रयास - और असफलता - वास्तव में ये ही तो सफलता को परिभाषित करते हैं| 'जीत सबकुछ है' - ये सत्य नहीं है | ख़ासकर खेल में नहीं, और ओलिंपिक में तो कदापि नहीं| हाँ, मानव कर्म के कुछ पहलू में जीत की अहमियत इस लिए है क्यूंकी कुछ लोगों के जिंदगी के मायने इस बात पर ही आधारित होते हैं |

याद करता हूँ Louis Borges के कथन को -" हार की प्रतिष्ठा को कभी-कभी सुनहरी विजय भी नही छू पाती | मेरे दोस्त , तुम लड़े, और हारे - क्या यह वही प्रतिष्ठा नहीं है ?
तो फिर ओलिंपिक में सिर्फ़ बोल्ट और फ्लेप्स ही कैसे हैं? यह तुम जैसे हज़ारों प्रतिस्परद्धियों का है - जो लड़े, और फिर चुपचाप चल दिए | और फिर , तुम सम्मानित भी हुए हो- पदकों के सम्मान से कहीं ज़्यादा | क्या हुआ , किसी ने देखा या नही - पर तुमने अपना सर्वश्रेष्ट कोशिश की- ये आत्मसंतुष्टि क्या किसी पदक जी मुहताज है ? मुझे नहीं लगता |
मैं जानता हूँ , मैं इतने अच्छा भी नहीं लिख पाता कि वो इतिहास मे निशान छोड़ जाए | पर यह मुझे अपने भावों को रखने से नही रोक सकता, और तुम्हारे 'हार-जीत' वाले घावों को साफ करने से भी हरगिज़ नहीं | तुम्हारे बिना , कोई ओलिंपिक हो ही नहीं सकता - यह एक सहज सत्य है |
जब स्कूल में था, पढ़ा था-'हार की जीत' | तुम वही बाबा भारती हो, जिससे कोई भी उसका आत्मविश्वास का घोड़ा नहीं छीन सकता |
फिर मिलेंगे Rio de Jenario में दोस्त, जहाँ मुझे विश्वास है , दिन तुम्हारे होंगे - तुम्हारे हाथ पदकों से भरे होंगे| अगर ऐसा नहीं भी हो सका , तो भी तुम सपने देखना मत छोड़ना | तुम कह सकते हो -' मैं सपने देखता हूँ, पर ऐसा करने वाला मैं अकेला नहीं हूँ | ' तुम हमेशा और हमेशा हमारे लिए विजयी थे, हो और रहोगे |

- तुम्हारा प्रशंसक

Goal -2 : It's not luck

Brevity | Goal -2 | EM Goldratt                                                     Rate ***** 5/5

Further to his first book , the author has explained behavioral  management and market in this book rather than physical constraints.

Alex is now executive VP in diversified group. He has to handle the constraints of not a single plant but conglomerates of them.. The biggest worry is that the credit rating of the UniCo continues to drop , and decision is being made to sell off the lurid performer diversified group; and concentrate at core business of UniCo.Obviously, they don't want to invest a single penny for improvement now.

Graby , the CEO is retiring next year- so , Peach and Smith are in row for his position, themselves beingexecutive CEO of two main groups.

Julie, used to be complaint wife of Alex, for not caring of family- is now a marriage counselor, and insists and help Alex very much in decision making- using the Thinking Process they learnt from Jonah, the scientist. Alex is trying to save diversified group from being sold off; tries to find out constraints out of behavioral patterns.

Don assists Alex now. Pete is the president of a small printing company, in diversified group - a barely profitable. Bob is president of I Cosmetics and Stacey as president of Pressure Stream in diversified group of UniCo.

Alex sees that reduction in price has wiped out increased sales and improvement in technology, shorter lead times are just entry fee in market.

The issue in Printing company is candy wrapper- low runners and more losses. Pete's printing presses have small set up time and give 3 times more output per hour at small scale,but lags in large quantity business of sophisticated techniques. Besides, clients are have become habitual of on time delivery and quality- and always seek low cost to pay.

Only option is left to Alex - Selling Pete's company with a profit, removing black spot on his own head, and thus new owner would not interfere in operation in that case.

Alex worries about the depreciating value of printers to peanuts.  What a dubious situation: To increase Profit - ‘Close the wrapper department.’ While as the value of asset determines the ' Selling Price' .So  to protect the asset value -'Keep wrapper department operational'. Don reminds him of the advantage of Pete's presses to compete at small scale, but at large scale , advantage was wiped out by the speed of the competitors.

Hilton Smyth is reiterating to sell the printer company- Alex feels bad with the idea if Hilton would become next CEO after Granby. Traumaan and Doughty are two top managers in divestment.

Julie insists him to go for cloud " Before we write them it looks as if there are infinite negatives, but when we verbalize and examine, it turns out that there are relatively few, and most of them are pitiful excuses.”

There was only 3 months to switch the ownership when Alex called his fellows for a move to examine.

Commend Bob with his  I Cosmetic company - Engineering said it complete while Production said it not. Plant managers had local optima and once they shipped that too 3 months of consumption , the headache became of distribution.

Without taking the account of what shops were holding, plant launched a new product, somewhere more and somewhere much less.  What Bob did that to wipe local consideration, hold the stock at the origin (plant). He made 20 regional stocks to respond quickly to shops and cut shipping cost. The size of each region's buffer was decided by local consumption and expected replenishment by shops. To avert the damage of not having stock in a region in fluctuating demand, he kept 20 days average sales in each region.

This resulted an increase in on time delivery from 30% to 90%, lowering inventories from 90 to 40 days. Also, as he replenished local stocks with full trucks- transportation cost came down.

Alex smelled a vast lacuna in Bob's distribution system. As per cost accounting , finished goods inventory is registered as raw material cost plus added value- labor cost and overheads. When the finished goods were reduced, the added values of the reduced portion turns out as LOSS.

For Bob, inventory reduced by 50% figured out easily when stocked rather spread across the country , but...... So, Cost method would count much more loss than Bob figured out. What a illusion more you don't sale, better you are.

Difficult to explain to Prospective buyer. The positives are disguised as low obsolescence and new product need not to mandate with old stock write-offs. Should Bob inflate the central stock rather than regional ti improve it ?

Now it was Pete's Printing Company turn. Because of fierce competition, the shops allured their customers with campaigns and posses large stock to reduce per unit cost- even if the risk was there to shop that a slight change in gradients (of wrapper) would obsolete entire their stock.

As Pete's presses had low set up time, they were cheaper for small scale and shops wanted low per unit cost. To sack competitors out, they devised new offer to shops. The quantities would be supplied at interval of two month, but cost would remain as per the large stock deal.

Also, Shops could cancel the deal anytime (for if any change in wrapper in future) without penalty. This saved shops many ways- They refrained from losses due to change in wrapper between the deal - low obsolescence, low risk of holding inventory and advantage of same low per unit cost.

For Pete, he could deliver fast at low cost in small scale, risk of holding inventory to him was not much, and edge over competitors.

Alex went to Europe with  Brandon Traumaan and  Jim Doughty , experts in selling companies- to get prospective buyers to diversified group. Pete went on to deal with the buyers for printing company.

 Alex firmly believed that companies must protect the interest of employees and that managers are watching only local optima. Pete showed them his cloud technique he learnt -" This technique claims that you

should not attempt to strive for a compromise , rather examining the assumptions under the arrows in order to break the conflict.” He informed that Pete would work best with any buyer ; and persuaded Jim and Doughty to believe that with logic and intuition , one can break cause-effect cloud- what he called Current reality Tree to get the one or two -the main causes.

For the spare time, Jim and Doughty - started counting undesirable effects (UDE) , when Alex said confidently that he would be able to find out the root cause associating them via Curent Reality Tree.

While in the meeting with wheeler-dealers for the sale of Pressure Steam, they calculated the value on how much one will get on selling rather than Cost minus depreciation, and expected  100 millions USD for Stacey's company.

Before the negotiation of Bob's company, Alex explained the new distribution system of it to Traumann and Jim , hiding the impact of reduction of inventory in cost system method. But they sneaked that, and despite of loss illusion, they were forced to appreciate. On hearing Pete's Sales policy, they got more belief on Thinking Process enabled common sense based Current reality Tree. With the figured UDEs he was told to probe the root cause via clouds.

While doing so, Alex went on describing how most mangers perceive value of product based on local efforts to design i.e product cost plus reasonable margin. Prices and quantities sold are determined by market's perception of value and much less by suppliers perception of value (a clash).

Also, most of mangers believe that selling below product cost (market perception) results losses in long run. but doing so, you lose the money from the client who were buying, and still saving does NOT comes more than the amount, as you hardly cut variable cost but not at all fixed cost.

Alex proceeded- Most of mangers believe in unique, single product based price; If ‘Different market sections might have different needs,’ then ‘Different market sections might have different perceptions of value for even the same product.’

Alex explained the segmentation of market (two section of market where change in prices in one section does not affects that in other); and that imposing single price may cause customer to pay very less than his perception or very high to his reluctance.

Managers are trying to achieve local optima, by segmentation we can minimize the effect of entry of new product on existing ones. In segmented market, Orders are accepted only according to their impact

on the overall throughput and overall operating expense. Managers need to take action that increases the perception of value the market has for company product - acquire dominant competitive edge, that becomes difficult to emulate over considerable duration and sell all the capacity at full price this way.

Seeing Jim still unturned to his decision of selling the companies, Alex unveiled further-Usually we misunderstand that increased perception of values comes with "improved Product". actually it is just derieving benefit of existing product not upgrading it. Like Pete did, he concentrated to rule out the negatives of customer from core and not from UDEs. He continued-look at the UDEs of customer, look at the negative branches that can be trimmed with best option of offering. As we don't change our physical product and clients negative UDEs trimmed off , they will pay more.

Now, in order to get objective of sale capacity at full price and dominant competitive edge - Alex bashes on something called Future Reality Tree, where start with wishful thinking and via if-then communicate to objective (no UDE known).

If ‘The perception of value the market has for the company’s products is higher than the perception it has for the competitors’ products.’ -prices,’ then ‘The company increases its market share.’ Thus customers Prefer you .

To avoid being copied by competitors, use power of FRT- Negative Reservation. We cannot afford new investment, so introduce small change that brings high benefit to market addressing NOT the UDE but the core problem of market using Current reality tree.

He revealed " whenever there is a deal write all the negatives, and connect to them with if-then logic. Don’t leave them just hanging there .If you don't get way to trim the negatives. Show it to your partner without any suggestion or bias. if is able to trim it-okay for both, if not-it is not you against him rather you both against the problem- relations remain intact."

Don implemented the same method to a almost ruined deal where he did NOT start with his great offer and letting buyer to 'object', rather start (when buyer has not much trust or pretends so to reduce price) from the buyers own problem , he won't be able to object, now show them policies concerned to their problems. Then, give them FRT - negative branches - possibilities that buyer can reject the offer, small order as big order per unit cost etc. Finally, give buyer time to decide.

How did Bob stopped competitors to emulate in ICosmetics? He analyzed the large inventories possess by shops to get low per unit costs, high operation cost, huge cash pressure or debt, and shortage in spite of large inventories due to mismatch with customers' demand  - these all resulting obsolescence and low profitability . The new distribution system could increase sales by 30% in long term and sales will drop due to prior stocks with shop to replenish (two months),while average order cycle was 4 -5 months.Really a tough time with two month of loss for the ongoing situation! . Seeing the lousy credit rating of UniCo and temptation to sell the companies, the long term is not permitted.

Julie reminded him what jonah said in this context -" when the injections for FTR leads to new negative effects, people should not regard the injections 'Impractical' and ignore " . With a beginning of impractical injections, Alex and Bob reached that they can merchandise to shops on  consignment term, Shops didn't require to invest and they could pay back after sale. This would save them from hefty loan and pressure to buy large stocks of same product rather small consignments of many products- which in turn increased profitability. While the company would get more display space in shops and the sales should be reported to company on daily basis before next consignment (control for the company turns easier this way)- a competitive edge in market. Company had almost enough receivables to pay back to UniCo for 45 days for this initial release of finished inventories on consignment.

Seeing an example how his son tackled to purchase a costly BMW in share with his friend taking loans from his car fascinated father on the term to sell him only when it would be (loan from future buyer only) - Alex understood the edge of each company over competitors in the perception of buyers.

Printing press could be a model company to buyer -to schedule and control operations. In this way , He could get hefty amount and also no prospective buyer will interfere his model company.Stacy's pressure steam could get more than 4 times what it was getting on financials.

Alex showed to Trumann and  Doughty that Bob's solution will bring profit of 18% in ICosmetics.They were impressed because waiting 3-4 months cloud give  a very high price for ICosmetics, expected to deliver  such a high Profit. Similar could be done with Stacey's company too.

Alex got  a much required time of 4 months for Bob's and 6 weeks for Stacey's company.

In a meeting with plant managers, team Alex concluded that to increase sale at Pressure steam without investment and when customers want to pay less, could be done when they deliver directly the end product - Steam and not the machinery parts for the maintenance at their steam plant.

They went on FTR and response to prospect's need (including financial) to get this. This was above to consignment based approach. In this system, they need not to carry maintenance part to client site and can easily get all parts at own site. They introduced that they would pay penalty if fail to deliver in 24 hours -

based on the reliability they expect on concentrated maintenance part and their experts.  This was really an edge over competitors who try to follow.

After the sale of Bob's company and Pete's Press (as model) - UniCo got many times more than once they had expected. Alex is reluctant to sell ICosmetics (Pressure steam) and counted three reasons.

First, They had got 438 million USD against expected 150 millions. Second, Stacy's company is core to UniCo 's business of mechanics-so there needs an internal model, a catalyst for change .And , The credit rating of UniCo is fine.

When asked of the investment plan and strategy to increase productivity, he showed his eagerness to be executive vice president  of strategic planning. Granby remained silent.

Alex comes with his idea- the goal of a company is to make money not only now but future. We protect the interests of shareholders, but not of employees. So, summed up necessary conditions are

- Make money for now and in future.

-Provide a secure and satisfying environment for employees now as well as in the future.

-Provide satisfaction to the market now as well as in the future

So, goals always come with limitations. whatever of the three one chooses as goal remaining two become necessary conditions to achieve it, even though money is measured and rest two are not as a part of coincidence.

Also, don't make strategy based on a market forecast as it fluctuates. Develop a decisive competitive edge even if the company is not capable to invest for technology, make small changes to trim off market negatives.

He showed the example of Pressure-Steam, and continued -there is no absolute competitive edge that competitors would not emulate, but is just a matter of opportunity.

He blamed mangers for shortsightedness and said- Most of managers lay off employees when market drops below capacity. They should be responsible for employees security. Laying off to cut the cost and improve bottom line does not work.

Employees being insecure will not deliver best , productivity goes down further. Also, when market goes down, initially only profit goes down and not the cash reserve of company.  The manger must have precautionary step to develop enough flexibility among employee - for this segment the market. Even when Even when the market naturally segments for them, a new market opens up, the idiots immediately open a new plant. They segment the resources. The exact opposite of what should be done under a sensible.

strategy. As they are flexible -when a lucrative segment is up, the company shifts their focus away from some less lucrative segments, but don't stop any segment.

Alex was offered as CEO of UniCo after Granby.

The Goal -1 : A process of ongoing Improvement

Brevity | Goal -1 | EM Goldratt                                                            Rate *****  

What a darling book for management freaks . No dithering to give 5/5 to this bestseller book .

This story is about Alex and his fellows managers at UniCO. Bearington.
Bill Peach ,once a good friend of his , threatened him that he was going to close the plant if he is not able to  turn around the plant's performance and drowning shipment. Alex was newly joined. The responsible in the Plant were Bob (production manager since 9 yrs), Stacey (inventory Control manger),  Smyth Hilton(division productivity manger)
Like everyone in plant, Alex unleashed his pride for the experienced robots resulted productivity of the plant and they could lay off people , when once he happened to meet to his Alma-mater project guide, Jonah - a scientist, working on management science in particular.
Jonah, in-arguably concluded that if inventories hadn't down, employee expense was not reduced, company was not selling more product(no increase in shipping), noway plant robots increased his plant's productivity.
With a blame to accept so many things without question like others do and not thinking at all to astonished Alex, he asked the goal of his company. He bereaved saying that productivity was to accomplish something in terms of goals and " Every action that brings a company closer to its goal is productive"

Alex discussed a lot with many in the plant and found that supplying jobs, cost-effective purchasing, manufacture quality product , Technology, having big share of market to unload inventories (even at loss) - these all were reasons for plant existence and NOT the goals. Keeping employee busy when no work , was not going to make any money.
He concluded the goals as - Net Profit, ROI and Cash Flow. Jonah coined the terms as -Throughput, Inventory and Operational Cost.
"Throughput," he said, " the rate at which the system generates money through sales." 

 "Inventory is all the money that the system has invested in purchasing things which it intends to sell."
"Operational expense is all the money the system spends in order to turn inventory into throughput."
So, the goal of company was - Increase throughput while simultaneously reducing both inventory and operating expense.

Inspite of new robots, shipment and sales were not increased , rather inventories went up. Why? 

 
They kept on releasing more materials to the floor to feed robots (just as Peach wanted higher efficiency), letting them to produce at their efficiency, and hence they kept on producing parts that were not required in surplus, while lacked certain parts to assemble - this mounted the inventory. In first glance, it appeared that cost of production being in bulk when down, but perhaps they forgotten the added carrying cost in inventory (an OC).

Jonah explained- As we ' buy' time from employee,and don't sell time to customer (except services)- we should not include direct labor in inventory but in OC. The price we charge should be greater than (combination of inventory + operational expense per unit) in comparison to the value market determines.
Money lost is OC. Any investment that is being sold is inventory.
Knowledge for new manufacturing Process -> OC
Knowledge for sale, under patent or pertaining to a product in the firm (which depreciates) -> Inventory.

Jonah concluded that struggle for higher efficiencies took them in opposite direction and "A plant in which everyone is working all the time is very inefficient."
Excess manpower, excess capacity -raising inventory -increasing OC. He pointed that there is a large market demand for what we produce and we have large capacity as well, only some thought is missing.
"The tendency for most managers is to trim capacity wherever they can, so no resource is idle, and everybody has something to work on." Trimming capacity by laying off - neither increases sales, nor reduces
inventory and improves only one measurement OC. But factually, against the assumptions-throughput goes down, inventory goes up and so is OC.
This happens based on dependent events together with  'statistical fluctuations''. Let us understand this based on a row of boys walking : 

 

Hilton, in his new role, where mangers reported him -emphasized on cost reduction.

" In case of linear dependency, the fluctuations of the variables down the line will fluctuate around the maximum deviation established by any preceding variables."
The proof is Pete's company (link)

 
A bottleneck, is any resource whose capacity is equal to or less than the demand placed upon it , else it  is non-bottleneck.And, one need not to balance demand with capacity but with flow of product. So, bottlenecks can be used to control the flow through a system.
How to find Bottleneck?  First estimate the market average demand (in terms of hours ) .If number of available hours per resource (excluding breaks) is less than demand hours- that is bottleneck.
Symptoms : The parts (inventory) lacking in supply will be accumulated in front of bottleneck. In a company, Sequence of operation cannot be change (unlike a queue).

Alex and his people found that surprisingly their most advanced robot was a bottleneck. It had low set up time and low per unit cost, but on removing old machines - increased production of unwanted parts and lingered desired once. This reduced assembly and shipping.
So, Some percent of non-bottleneck should be idle, but for bottle neck it should NOT. Idle bottleneck means lesser throughput of the organization. Means loss in bottleneck processing is not only the loss at that point but many a times more in the throughput - due to inability to assemble the product. Simultaneous hazard happens when bottleneck's time is wasted on unwanted work or future work - cash flow remains not sustained.
What to do ? Enhance bottleneck productivity with siblings (irrespective of cost rise) and wise opt in its feed.

Alex team tagged the parts which were reaching to bottleneck - red and green . Red, lack of which, the assembling was delayed, were prioritized to reach to bottleneck. Also , they put Quality Control in front of (usually they had it after) bottleneck, so that inferior qualities shouldn't reach to bottleneck, causing wastage of its time, ensured availability of trained operators all the time, activating the three machines to supplement the bottleneck; increased the batch size.

Throughput increased initially , but soon inventories heaped at the end, both in form of excess finished good , and with work-in-progress those of green tagged. Why? See .

 
What to do ? Team Alex decided to have a three-day stock of work-in-process in front of each bottleneck, so that non-bottlenecks are not clogged too.

In order to increase more sale, Alex took shipping orders ahead of schedule. He studied various times of operation :

Set up time - resource is ready to work on the part initially, part waiting its turn.
Process Time - time spent to increase the value of part.
Queue Time - Part in line waiting for resourse, while resource is working on something else .
Wait Time - Part waits not for resource, but another part for assembly.

 
Alex said to cut the batch size in half - this reduces inventories to half, reduces the cash tied at one time, eases the cash flow pressure. Also, half was the process time so more costumers could be served at a time. Seemingly, Set-up cost increases, but Saving set- ups at a non-bottleneck doesn't make the system one bit more productive as they have high idle time already. This ensured more order, more shipping.

But , now raised Cost measurement issue . Mostly cost is measured on direct labor cost . Let us say, we reduced the batch size from 100 to 50. Actually, set up time remained same (as non-bottlenecks have lot of idle time), but it is spread over 50 parts instead of 100. so  per-unit set up time seems double(illusion).
So per unit setup time + Process time = Cost . This high cost appears because of  measurement assumption that all of the workers in the plant are always going to be fully occupied, and therefore, in order to do more set-ups, one has to hire more people.

Somehow, Alex managed to keep his point to Granby (CEO) and got appreciations for his bright idea from mangers and customers as well for on time delivery. Hilton still believed that an hour saved at a non-bottleneck was an hour saved at that resource.
Alex got promoted to division manager and Bob to his place of plant manager. With a new responsibility , they concluded new scale  -
Throughput is most important, then inventory—due to its impact on throughput and only then, at the tail, comes operating expenses.
But , after some smooth time, there emerged a number of holes in front of assembly than in front of bottle neck. Stacy emphasized to remove tags. Why?
Let us See.
Alex accepted more order for plant for 10% below cost (to increase sale and let not to divest the companies). Note that cost was still determined by labor cost. To rule the market, he nodded for this as there was extra capacity in plants, actually only out of pocket cost was that of raw materials. 
Then , there emerged many traveling bottlenecks, difficult to analyze and Control each one. Tasks got stuck. Alex concluded-Let Murphy hits before a bottleneck X. the stream of tasks to the bottleneck is temporarily stopped and the bottleneck is starved, and eats the 3 days stock as well before it goes down.
 When the stoppage is overcome , the upstream resources not only have to supply the current consumption of the bottleneck, at the same time they have
to rebuild the inventory. This also happens when bottlenecks have more capacity than upstream non bottlenecks.  So, to utilize resources to maximum, the upstream resources must have spare capacity.
Taking more order in such case , turned low capacity non-bottleneck to bottleneck due to reduction of spare capacity of bottleneck.
Alex and his fellows had to care entire division now (not only a plant). Identification of constraints in behavioral (not physical) patterns viz.  lack of sensible long-term strategy, the measurement issues,  the general attitude of passing the ball was mandatory , seeing no dearth of market.
Required was a thought process for the ability to answer three simple questions: 'what to change?', 'what to change to?', and 'how to cause the change?'
  If a manager doesn't know how to answer those three questions, is he or she entitled to be called manager?"