PRODUCTION BOTTLENECK: HOW TO IDENTIFY IT AND EXAMPLES - DUDAS - 2025

A production bottleneck is a process that is part of a chain of processes, which, due to its limited production capacity, reduces the capacity of the entire chain.

The result is production stoppages, oversupply, customer pressure, and low employee motivation. A bottleneck refers to the resource that takes the most time in production operations to meet a certain demand.

Source: pixabay.com

Typically, you see phenomena such as an increase in inventory before the bottleneck and a shortage of parts after the bottleneck. Statistically, since fluctuations are inconsistent, these phenomena (excess inventory and insufficient materials) do not always occur.

Bottlenecks can be solved by increasing capacity utilization, finding new suppliers, automating labor processes, and creating better forecasts for consumer demand.

What does it consist of?

A production bottleneck is a point of congestion that slows down the process. For example, delays in getting materials to the factory floor, or producing defective items due to poor employee training.

Any event that stops production increases costs and can delay the delivery of products to a customer. Delays can mean the loss of a customer order and possibly the loss of future business.

By avoiding bottlenecks in the production process, a high level of capacity can be maintained.

Consequences

Among the consequences are possible production stops, excess supplies, drop in employee motivation and loss of customers.

Bottlenecks can cause a machine to be overloaded. This could cause damage or wear and as a result, create a potential long-term downtime.

Lock in production

A hang in production would be the result of one machine slowing down the entire process chain and constantly leaving the other machines unable to continue, while building up a large queue.

Excess supplies

In the case of a long-term accumulation, the limited capacity under which the bottlenecked machine runs could become so slow that the accumulated resources that are queued must be stored.

The cost of storing supplies is significant. This is going to require resources to transport materials from one place to another, as well as space, another potential cost.

Drop in employee motivation

The result of bottlenecks could require employees to try harder. Likewise, they will have to work more hours. In addition, there is the factor of stress and frustration on the bottleneck machine operator.

This could result in a loss of efficiency, as employees may not be very motivated to work.

How is it identified?

Identifying bottlenecks is critical to improving efficiency on the production line. This allows the area where accumulation occurs to be determined.

The machine or process that accumulates the longest queue is often a bottleneck, although this is not always the case.

All companies must budget for sales and production levels. They should then review the actual results to determine if production is operating efficiently. Variations in the production process are analyzed to make changes, including improvements to eliminate bottlenecks.

Bottlenecks can be found by identifying areas where buildup occurs, evaluating performance, evaluating whether each machine is being used at full capacity, and finding the machine with a high lead time.

Accumulation

When product input comes faster than process speed, backlog begins to occur.

This means that the machine does not have enough capacity, is not being fully utilized, is being used inefficiently, or has an unskilled operator.

However, this method is not effective in identifying bottlenecks where queues are found at various points in the process.

performance

Since a production line is directly linked to the outputs produced by the machines, the performance of the same allows to identify the main bottleneck in the manufacturing process.

By improving the performance of each machine, it will be possible to assess which machine most affects overall production. In this way, the bottleneck in the process chain can be determined.

Full capacity

By using the utilization percentage of each production unit, it is possible to determine the machine that uses the highest percentage of its capacity.

This machine will be hindering the others by forcing them to operate at a lower capacity.

However, if all machines in the process chain are running at a similar capacity level, increasing the capacity of the lowest machine will not create a significant improvement in overall production.

Timeouts

In the case that several production units are already operating at full capacity, the monitoring of the downtime of the machines will allow to identify which machine generates a bottleneck.

The machine before the machine with the longest wait or downtime in the process chain is a bottleneck.

Examples

First example

There are short-term and long-term bottlenecks. Short-term bottlenecks are temporary and are not usually a major problem. An example of a short-term bottleneck would be a qualified employee taking a few days off.

Long-term bottlenecks happen all the time and can significantly hamper production. An example of a long-term bottleneck is when a machine is not efficient enough. As a result, it will generate a long queue.

Second example

Suppose there are four steps in a production process. In this process, step 3 is the bottleneck, with a capacity of only 70 items per hour. This is indicated in the image by the solid red line. This step limits the production capacity of the entire process:

If its capacity is raised to 100, the output of the entire process can go up to 100. At that point there would be two bottlenecks: step 1 and step 3, as indicated by the dashed red line.

In other words, by increasing the capacity of that step by 43%, the capacity of the entire process is also increased by 43%.

References

1. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (2018). Bottleneck (production). Taken from: en.wikipedia.org.
2. Lean-Manufacturing-Japan (2018). Bottleneck (Constraint). Taken from: lean-manufacturing-japan.com.
3. Renaud Anjoran (2016). How To Avoid Bottlenecks In Production With Lean Methods And Tools. Taken from: cmc-consultants.com.
4. Investopedia (2018). Bottleneck. Taken from: investopedia.com.
5. Bert Markgraf (2018). How to Identify Bottlenecks in Manufacturing. Small Business - Chron.com. Taken from: smallbusiness.chron.com.