

Throughout the book, whenever a meeting or telephone call dialogue happens with Jonah he poses a question to Alex Rogo or a member of his crew which in turn causes them to talk amongst themselves to come up with a solution to their problem. In the book, Jonah teaches Alex Rogo by using the Socratic method. Further more, they identified processes at the heat treat, identified as their second bottleneck, that caused massive delays in their getting product through the heat-treat and which had also caused some products to be heat-treated multiple times (to make softer and then harder again) instead of just once or not at all. In response to questions about the logic of using outdated technology in modern manufacturing, Alex's team brought in an old machine they received for free (which had previously been used at their plant in conjunction with two other machines) in order to increase the capacity of the NCX-10 machine, which had been identified as one of the two bottlenecks.

Alex and his team identify the bottlenecks in their process and immediately begin to implement changes to help increase capacity and speed up production. The book goes on to point out the role of bottlenecks (constraints) in a manufacturing process, and how identifying them not only makes it possible to reduce their impact, but also yields a useful tool for measuring and controlling the flow of materials.
