Alex is propositioned with a test.

They can greatly increase sales, current and future, if they can
ship a thousand products in two weeks. Impossible without committing the plant to nothing but
the new order? Wrong! How about smaller batch sizes. Cut them in half again. Then promise to
ship 250 each week for four weeks starting in two weeks. The customer loved it.

Chapter Thirty

Seventeen percent!! That’s great, but it’s not derived from the old cost accounting model. The
auditors sent down to the plant from Division find just 12.8% improvement. Most of it accounts
from the new order. Which by the way, the owner of the company that placed the order came
down personally to shake everybody’s hand in the plant and to give a contract to them for not a
thousand parts but ten thousand. Anyway, tomorrow is the day of reckoning at division.

Chapter Thirty-One

Well the meeting at Division started out rough. Alex thought he would be meeting with Mr.
Peach and other top executives. Instead, he met with their underlings. He decides to try and
convince them it doesn’t work. Just before leaving he decides to see Mr. Peach. It’s a good thing
he did, because he just got promoted to Mr. Peach’s position. Now Alex has to manage three
plants as the whole division. He calls Jonah desperately and asks for help. Jonah declines until he
has specific questions.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Alex has a nice dinner with his wife. Through the veal parmesan and cheese cake it is decided
that Alex should ask Jonah how he can get other people to understand these techniques that his
team has discovered without being condescending.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Now is the time to assemble Alex’s team for Division. Surprisingly the accountant with two
years to retirement is on board, but the production manager isn’t. He wants to be plant manager
to continue their efforts. Everything is totally into place at the plant but more is needed for
division.
 Chapter Thirty-Four

Alex is firmly engrossed with the problems of taking over the division. With advice from his
wife he decides to enlist the help of his team at the plant. Every afternoon they will meet to solve
the problem. After the first day it is obvious , they will need them all.

Chapter Thirty-Five

The second day they are led in a discussion about the periodic table of elements, and how the
scientists actually got a table of any sort. Maybe that is how they will solve the massive problems
of division, by understanding how the scientists started with nothing and achieved order. A way
to define them by their intensive order is needed.

Chapter Thirty-Six

The team finally comes up with the process: Step one – identify the system’s bottlenecks; Step
two- decide how to exploit those bottlenecks; Step three- subordinate everything else to step two
decisions; Step four- evaluate the systems bottlenecks; Step five- if, in a previous step, a
bottleneck has been broken, go to step one. It seems so simple, just different.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The team decides to revise the steps: Step one – identify the systems constraints; Step two –
decide how to exploit the systems constraints; Step three – subordinate everything else to step
two decisions; Step four – evaluate the systems constraints; Step five- warning!!! If in the
previous steps a constraint has been broken, go back to step one, but don’t allow inertia to cause
a system constraint.

It also has been discovered that they have been using the bottlenecks to produce fictitious orders
in an effort to keep the bottlenecks busy. That will free up twenty percent capacity, which
translates in to market share.

Chapter Thirty-Eight
Talking with the head of sales. Alex finds out that there is a market order to fill the capacity. It’s
in Europe, so selling for less there will not affect domestic clients. If it can be done, will open a
whole new market. Then Alex ponders Jonah’s question, to determine what management
techniques should be utilized. Alex determines how a physicist approaches a problem. Maybe
this will lead to an answer.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Alex experiences a problem at the plant. It seems all the new orders have created new
bottlenecks. After analyzing the problem, they agreed to increase inventory in front of the
bottlenecks an tell sales to not promise new order deliveries for four weeks, twice as much as
before. This will hurt the new relationship between sales and production, but it is needed.
Production is an ongoing process of improvement, and when new problems arise they need to be
dealt with accordingly.

Chapter Forty

Finally, struggling with the answer to Jonah’s question, Alex comes up with some questions on
his own: What to change? What to change to? How to cause the change? Answering these
questions are the keys to management, and the skills needed to answer them are the keys to a
good manager and ultimately the answer to Jonah’s question.