The Japanese used a variety of production-enhancing processes, such as kaizen and poka-yoke, but it took time before they were recognized and brought back to the United States by individuals like Edward Deming. Meanwhile, other company managers were also looking for ways to improve quality and speed up production. In 1951, the concept of total quality management along with related quality circles was introduced. In 1982, Tom Peters' book In Search of Excellence shook the industrial world by pushing companies to seriously consider their way of producing. Statistical process control (SPC) was also making a comeback in industrial areas. The Ford Company began to take a serious look at what was happening with automobile manufacturing in Japan. It is in the midst of all these changes that Israeli-born physicist and business manager Goldratt used the unique form of the novel instead of a textbook to introduce his theory of constraints. It doesn't seem like a big deal these days because in most companies looking for bottlenecks is second nature. Yet, going back to the early 1980s, these were radical ideas regarding continuous process improvement, much like The Goal