Speak to him a simple word of truth, and he rejoices. Fabricate your words;he is enraged. His pearls of wisdom uncover the same facts tobusinessmen too.

Meet Eliyahu M Goldratt, the founder father of the "Theory of Constraints",who left the audience spellbound by his charismatic oration, with a touch ofhumour, and brusque demeanour which strived to kindle a spirt to anindividual's enlightenment to realistic knowledge.

``You need the mind of a child (ever open to knowledge),'' said Goldratt,the author of the management best-seller `The Goal', at an enormous treat ofa two-hour interactive session filled with drama. The session was part ofthe CII Quality Summit '99.

Amidst abrupt sparks of loud utterances, Goldratt elaborated on the same.Said he: ``What is important to know is, to what extent you know. What Iwant to prove to you is how easy it is. It is like competing against blindkittens, even if they are Japanese.''

``Let's understand to what extent are we putting a facade of knowledge. Wedo not know what is the level of knowledge in the industry,'' Goldratt wavedout to a captive audience which nodded at all his assertions and to all hisquestions in the affirmative.

``We must have the ability to know what is the impact on the profitabilityof the company,'' he said, and added while raising his voice, ``if the goalof the company is to make money, each one of you as a manager is takingdecisions. They are not good managers who do not know how much money theircompany is making. So you ought to know what is the impact on the net profitof your company.''

Then Goldratt took the audience on a different tack: a totally unrealisticcompany, where all data is known! He took two products, `P' and `Q', andproceeded with their different levels of the manufacturing chain right fromthe raw material stage to the delivery and sale stage.

``What is the goal of the company?'' he repeatedly asks the audience whichby now has caught on to the answer "to make money". He gave ficticiousfigures to the expenditure at the various levels of the process and thenasked the audience to give their estimate of what would be the profit/lossof the company. ``You are the boss of the company. Take your time, calculateand give me an answer,'' he said and walked out for a quiet smoke, leavingmanagers busy with their calculations. After a break, comes back theRabbi-looking Goldratt only to be surprised at the varied nature of repliesby different managers present in the audience. ``Let's see how good anIndian manager is,'' he says flipping through the answer slips -- each ofwhich has a different calculation. ``Ah! I cannnot say they are identical,''he quips. After taking the crowd through calculations of throughput -- moneygenerated by interacting with the external world, ie sales, minus what ispaid to suppliers-and operating expenditure (money needed by the company tooperate) of the fictitious company, Goldratt justified how different thereality was to the perception: the lower price product could actually be aprofit maker for the whole organisation, as against the product which thetraditional pricinciples of cost accounting might advocate.

He also struck down the popular belief that local optima always has apositive impact at the company -- or what he calls, `global' -- level. Inreality, local impact does not have any leaning to global impact, he said.

Correlating a company's manufacturing process with that of a chain, Goldrattexplained that it is made of interconnected links. The utmost important taskfor any manager, he pointed out, was to identify the weak link -- and notmake the strong link stronger.

Explaining this, Goldratt said that the most important thing was the weightof the chain, which is why it was essential to rectify the weak link whichis the bottleneck.

``If you tell a manager of a particular department to improve, he mayimprove. But does this benefit the company as a whole, which has otherweaker links?'' questioned Goldratt. ``No,'' roared the audience inone voice.

He then explained to the avid audience: ``When a stronger link is doublingits efficiency in the chain, it is in reality a negative impact on thecompany. As, if a crucial weak link does'nt work, there is no point in thestrong link working more efficiently.''

He further explicated, ``If, throughout, your manufacturing process worksefficiently to produce x amount, but the weaker link exists in the marketplace, is the chain performing well?'' The question was self-explanatory.``Thus, if one link of a chain drops the ball, the throughput would bezero!'' Goldratt swaggered.

``However, if a manager of a strong link in a chain who is twice asefficient, were to slow down to the level of the weaker link, his neck wouldbe on the line-even though that is what will benefit the company,'' he said,taking a serious dig at the normal ways of management. ``So when a managersays, `I have worked thrice as much, give me a medal', the efficiency hasnot affected the chain,'' he added.

Thus, he spelt out his first commandment, identification (of the weak link)followed by the task of strengthening it. Second comes exploitation of theconstraints (squeezing out the maximum from existing resources). Third:subordinating, where every other activity is subordinate to the weak link,and here an important lesson of JIT can be implemented: do not produce moretill it is required. Four: elevating the bottleneck, so that one weak link'sbenefits can be magnified and amplified across the organisation. Finally,the fifth, and most important step, said Goldratt, is to go back to stepone. Without doing so, he said, while a weak link may have turned strong,another weak link will emerge to be tackled.

Asking the managers to avoid giving "beautiful" excuses about governmentrules and poor infrastructure, a visibly irate Goldratt warned industriesthat if they do not face up to change, they will vanish in a shakeout withthe collapsing tariff barriers and global competition.

Changing his mood to a more serious note, Goldratt called upon the managersto become serious about improvements as more than anything else it was thehuman factor, such as job-losses, which affect society as a whole. He thenbemoaned the vast bank of Indian intelligence which was going waste andunder-utilised. His final word to managers: `You know what takes to improveyour infrastructure? ``It's here,'' the mesmeriser concluded, pointing outto his brain. It won him a standing ovation.