The Goal is about a plant manager who doesn't know (or remember) that the rate of the equationreaction is the rate of the slowest step, but has to go on a boy scouts hike, with bunch of kids, including a fat kid in it, to re-learn this. However, he re-learns this in the context of manufacturing, so that's okay. Also his wife leaves home, but comes back  .
He gets in-frequent advice from his college physics professor who aha!s him continually with insights while globe-trotting (jet-setting, actually) to meet with CXOs in limousines to solve such problems.

The Goal is an amazing look inside how plants operate.  

The three definitions that Jonah gives are also superb at thinking about all things in this mediated, second/third-wave life

This book poses problems that are a typical subset of systems thinking (or rather operations research). 

also see : sizovs mention about queueing theory in the battlecruiser shaped programmer post

the core part about identifying the goal, is pure gold

the story of the marching boy scouts, as well as the bottlenecks in the plant resemble the wild demand/supply swings of the beer  game. I feel queueing in complex systems is a central problem (or bottleneck, if you will) in the 'real' world