Understanding Bottlenecks In
Planning & Scheduling
The first step is to distinguish between the two types of resources in your plant:
- Bottleneck — Any resource whose
capacity is equal or less than the market demand.
- Non-Bottleneck — Any resource whose capacity is greater than the market demand.
Market demand must be synchronized with the capacity of the Bottleneck and the Release of Material into the production system.
Capacity constraints; i.e., Bottlenecks are not inherently bad or good, but they must be proactively managed! In fact, an unbalanced plant, properly managed, will typically outperform a balanced plant.
Because the Bottleneck dictates the output of the plant, an hour lost at the Bottleneck is an hour lost forever… Never Starve the Bottleneck!
- To increase the capacity of the plant is to increase the capacity of only the Bottlenecks.
- To increase the capacity of the plant is to increase the capacity of only the bottlenecks. Finding enough capacity for the bottlenecks to become equal to demand.
Whatever the bottlenecks produce in an hour is the equivalent of what the plant produces in an hour. So, in essence an hour lost at a bottleneck is an hour lost for the entire system.
The actual cost of a bottleneck is the total expense of the system divided by the number of hours the bottleneck produces.
The true cost is the cost of an hour of the entire system.
