Bottleneck (production)

The result of having a bottleneck are stalls in production, supply overstock, pressure from customers, and low employee morale.

Another example is in a surface-mount technology board assembly line with several pieces of equipment aligned.

Usually the common sense strategy is to set up and shift the bottleneck element towards the end of the process, inducing the better and faster machines to always keep the printed circuit board (PCB) supply flowing up, never allowing the slower ones to fully stop; a strategy that could result in a deleterious (or damaging) and significant, overall drawback in the process.

[3] Identifying bottlenecks is critical for improving efficiency in the production line because it allows you to determine the area where accumulation occurs.

[4] Since the production line is directly linked to the output of the machines, it allows for the identifying of the main bottleneck in the manufacturing process.

[4] A fishbone diagram is a graphical means for finding possible problems in a chain of processes.

This is commonly used to find the bottleneck in a chain of processes due to being able to pinpoint the machine precisely responsible for the delay in production.

Overloading a machine can lead to the machinery getting damaged or worn out, and the result of this would be potential stretches of downtime in the long term.

This inefficiency significantly slows down production as many resources such as time, people, and machines are being paid to wait.

[17] To compensate for being the weakest link in the chain of processes, the bottleneck machine will have to run for longer periods of time.

Changeover and setup time should be minimised to allow the machines to run for slightly longer, reducing the impact of the bottleneck.

[10] In removing all non-value activities, you reduce the amount of redundant tasks performed by the bottlenecked machine and hence maximize efficiency.

The down side to this strategy is that inventory space will be needed to store the buffer stock, for when the machine before it in the chain of processes, is working.

[18] Cross-training employees will increase adaptability in the production line and therefore reduce potential downtime in the future.

Having all the machinery running at full capacity is not always ideal, due to situations where malfunctions occur and production is halted.

Taking into account the layout of the different processes, can also increase efficiency as it minimises delay caused in the transportation stage.

[21] A static bottleneck is where no random or unexpected fluctuations (such as those that would happen during either a changeover or a breakdown of the system) occur.

Finding a bottleneck in a static system is very simple, it is simply the machine or process with the longest constant cycle time.

[22] Bottlenecks shift when the location of the work center in the production area changes, and this leads to control problems due to the significant delay in output.