Eliyahu M. Goldratt

"My system does not make sense at all, but by God it’s working."

"I smile and start to count on my fingers: One, people are good. Two, every conflict can be removed. Three, every situation, no matter how complex it initially looks, is exceedingly simple. Four, every situation can be substantially improved; even the sky is not the limit. Five, every person can reach a full life. Six, there is always a win / win solution. Shall I continue to count?"

"If the goal is to make money, then (putting it in terms Jonah might have used), an action that moves us toward making money is productive. And an action that takes away from making money is non-productive."

"There are three measurements which express the goal of making money perfectly well, but which also permit you to develop operational rules for running your plant. Their names are throughput, inventory and operational expense."

"Fundamentally, a manager is looking to answer these questions: ‘what to change?’,’ what to change to?’ and ‘ how to cause the change?’"

"[Throughput is the] rate at which the system generates money through sales."

"[Inventory is measured by] the money the system invests in purchasing things the system intends to sell."

"Tell me how you measure me, and I will tell you how I will behave."

"[Operating expense is defined as] all the money the system spends in turning inventory into throughput."

"Companies are so immersed in the mentality of saving money that they forget that the whole intention of a project is not to save money but to make money."