Operations Management: Processes and Supply Chains, 12th Edition

Managing Bottlenecks in Service Processes

Bottlenecks can be both internal and external to the firm, and typically represent a process, a step, or a workstation with the lowest capacity. Throughput time is the total elapsed time from the start to the finish of a job or a customer being processed at one or more work centers. Where a bottleneck lies in a given service or manufacturing process can be identified in two ways. A workstation in a process is a bottleneck if (1) it has the highest total time per unit processed, or (2) it has the highest average utilization and total workload.

throughput time

Total elapsed time from the start to the finish of a job or a customer being processed at one or more work centers.

Example 5.1 illustrates how ...