The Big Idea: identify the bottleneck.  Relieve the bottleneck.  Repeat.

• The Goal is one of Jeff Bezos’ three required books for his senior team. (Also, Effective Executive and Innovator’s Dilemma)
• Cost accounting conventions lead businesses to focus on the wrong things.
• The goal of a business is to make money. Therefore, every operational metric should link back to profit.
• There are only three operational metrics that matter: 1) throughput, 2) inventory, 3) operational expense.
• Throughput is money generated when products go out the door.
• Inventory is money locked up in work in process until products go out the door.
• Operational expense is money required to generate throughput.
• Of these, throughput is by far the most important.
• The most important objective is to increase throughput.
• How do you increase throughput?  Identify the bottleneck (ignore everything else), relieve the bottleneck, repeat.