A novel idea

Modern Machine Shop, March, 1994 by Mark Albert

First, there was The Goal, the ground-breaking "business novel" by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox. Now there is The New Turnaround by Leonard Bertain, another business novel also featuring the human drama that arises out of a production crisis in a factory.

The Goal works so well because it is told as a thriller. A plant manager frantically races against time to keep his underperforming factory from being shut down. In the meantime, his preoccupation with production bottlenecks and missed delivery dates turns him into a neglectful husband at home. Can the factory be saved? Can the marriage be saved?

In The New Turnaround, the story is told from a machinist's point of view. He and his best buddy lose their jobs at a plant that can no longer compete. Because of his experience with CNC equipment, he lands a job at another factory, but his friend, an old-time skilled machinist, gets passed over. The friend ends up drinking too much and dies in a car wreck. It turns out that the new job is in a factory plagued by the same wasteful finger-pointing and cover-ups that ruined the other plant. Then a new plant manager comes on board and he brings in a Dr. Elbie, who helps the plant discover a new approach to conducting its business.

Both of these novels were written not to provide entertainment but to advance new management theories. Goldratt has a new method of scientific production control to get across Bertain wants us to see how the entire corporate culture must change from top to bottom for a company to turn itself around.

That a novel, a work of fiction, should be an effective "teaching tool" is worth a thought. What happens in a factory. any factory, is more than what may be surmised by looking at its bottom line. In these stories, lives are at stake. The management concepts are not mere abstractions, but flesh-and-blood, chips-and-coolant, dollars-and-cents affairs. The ideas have consequences. If you believe that how a factory is managed is indeed a vital concern, then a novel is the right choice to make new thinking come alive. In a novel we get to feel what' s going on. We experience for ourselves the power and excitement of change.

At last, running a machine shop has become both the domain of science and the stuff of art.

The New Turnaround is published by North River Press, (800) 486-2665.