1. “The Goal” defines throughput as “the rate at which the system generates money through sales”. Our textbook defines it as “the total elapsed time from the start to the finish of a job or a customer being processed at one or more workcenters”.

Inventory is defined by “The Goal” as “all the money that the system has invested in purchasing things which it intends to sell”. The textbook defines it as “a stock of materials used to satisfy customer demand or to support the production of services or goods”.

“The Goal” defines operational expense as “all the money they systems spends in order to turn inventory into throughput”. The textbook definition (found in table 7.1 on page 245) has a very similar explanation. According to Investopedia, it is defined as “a category expenditure that a business incurs as a result of performing its normal business operations”.

Overall, I find Goldratt’s definitions to be more helpful. They provide a more “common sense” and general approach to operations. I especially like the inventory definition. It essentially encompasses anything that could be sold as inventory; any item that could be turned into cash.

2. “The Goal” describes a bottleneck as “any resource whose capacity is equal to or less than the demand placed on it.

I see an example of this every day in the deli where I get lunch. There are two cashiers taking orders from two separate lines. Once they take an order, they give the customer a receipt with an order number, and give the ticket to the line cooks. Once an order is ready, the call the number, and place all orders on a counter for customers to pick up. However, since all orders go to the same place and there are many of them, customers frequently wait awhile for their number to be called and/or receive the wrong order. To reduce the bottleneck, one person could be taking orders while another retrieves