Lots of businesses face situations that cause a decline in productivity and sales. When discussing the bottleneck in a process or BIP this happens when information, materials or assets come in faster than the previous steps before receiving those items causing an overload or companies to fall behind in productivity or sales and structure. The BIP term compares information, products, materials, and labor hours with soda in a bottle. When soda is poured out of a bottle, it has to travel pass the bottle's neck. The bigger the bottle's neck, the more soda (info., materials, assets etc..) you can come through. The thinner the bottle's neck, the less you can pour out which causes a overload, or "bottleneck."
There are two main types of bottlenecks which are short term and long term bottlenecks. Short term bottlenecks are caused by temporary problems. A good example is when key team members become is sick and is gone for a short period of time. No one else is capable to take over their projects, which causes a backlog (BIP) in their work until they return. Long term bottlenecks occur all the time. An example would be when a company's month-end reporting process is delayed every month, because one person has to complete multiple tasks in order to get the information needed for the next person to complete the assignment. The other person can't even start until they have the final month-end figures.
The Theory of Constraints (TOC) was designed by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt in 1984 (Chase, R. B., Jacobs, F. R., & Aquilano, N. J. 2006). The “Theory of Constraints” is based on the thought of using scientific ethics and reason to lead human-based companies in their decision-making processes. The goal of the Theory of Constraints is to help company’s achieve their goals and, more...