The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt is an educational business book written in an innovative way to help illustrate the issues facing the supply chain and the world of manufacturing. The Objective was written in 1984 and is based on an industrial engineering practice known as the Theory of Constraints. The main character is Alex Rogo, UniCo plant manager at the Bearington headquarters. The novel takes the reader on Alex's journey to improve plant performance and gain an understanding of the steps for process improvement. From the beginning the reader is informed of the problems Alex is facing in his plant. It is obvious that the Bearington plant operates on an expediting basis, there is no consistent process that appears to get orders shipped on time, but it is based on which order has the most visibility. Alex has a background in industrial engineering and has done his best to keep the plant moving with adequate flow and maintaining high efficiency, but it doesn't seem to be enough. Bill Peach, director of the UniCo division, gives Alex an ultimatum to improve performance at the Bearington plant or it will be shut down. This situation forces Alex to think about his old physics professor he recently met at the airport, Jonah. Jonah and Alex got into an argument about the plant and Jonah wondered how successful Alex's plant really was. So now that Alex was faced with the plant's closure, he began to think that Jonah knew something that could save the plant. Once Alex had tracked down Jonah, they began discussing the problems the facility was facing. Jonah teaches Alex through the Socratic method by asking him questions to force him to develop solutions on his own. The first question was, “What is it?