Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Average Customer Rating:

Review for the goal	Customer Rating:
The book is excellent and an open eye for thinking, finding, and applying methodologic solutions to the daily process activties...

I bought a business book and a Novel broke out

Customer Rating:

For the person that prefers novels to business books this is probably a great resource for learning. As an avid reader of business books, it was hard for me to get through. After listening to, I couldn't read it, I went back to skim read it and try to understand the details to the Theory of Constraints. I guess that's my next read because based upon the raves, there is something I'm missing in the way the story is told.

An easy read, and worthwhile

Customer Rating:

I enjoyed the book, and it was an easy read. Not much is really directly applicable to what I do but I enjoyed the modeling of, and abstractions around, an old business---even if nothing particularly earth-shattering is surfaced. Some of the narrative was a bit hokey, but none so much so that it made me want to stop reading. I agree with others that this is good to have read, and helps to inform a solid operational and organizational theory.

Excellent Book

Customer Rating:

This is a great book which causes the reader to examine all process as how it relates to constraints. The lesson is to ease the constraint and certainly don't be a constraint. The lesson is done in a story form and the danger it that it's too subtle or else would be missed without a discussion with someone else who is knowledgeable in the book. There are also discussions about utilizing excess capacity and only calculating the variable costs without consideration for fixed and it is a compelling case. The side story about his wife is superfluous, a distraction and waste of time, but otherwise a great book.

Classic story of Lean, Love and Happiness

Customer Rating:

An old boss of mine at Amazon.com gave me a signed copy of this book to read about lean processing. Obviously, this book is a classic. What people fail to mention in their journey with the main character on lean manufacturing in desperate times, is the love story that unfolds in between the pressure of capitalism in a small town. While not a book to actually get specific action items, it does lay out a rather nice overview on concepts to look into for improvements at one's workplace. The story is nicely laid out in a narrative format in which our main character is "learned" through a zen like mentor, who dribbles out nuggets of information for him to sort through and implement at his factory. While this spreads the information out, with no real concentration of ideas for quick reference, it does build for suspenseful reading. If that is enough, you will also find out soon enough if the main character can save his factory, while keeping his marriage intact? The stress can be overwhelming at points, but a good enough read.