Bottleneck operation in manufacturing processes

Now a day in a competitive environment improving the productivity of manufacturing units is an essential part. To minimize all cycle time, it is very important to identify bottlenecks of operational processes to improve performance. Bottleneck analysis is a one of the lean manufacturing tools and is very helpful to improve production line efficiency in automobile and other manufacturing industries.

In this article, we will try to understand bottleneck analysis and its impact on manufacturing processes.

Content

• What is the bottleneck with examples.
• Types of a bottleneck.
• What is the shifting bottleneck.

What is the bottleneck?

The bottleneck is a structural lean manufacturing tool to identify sub–processes that are taking the highest time during operation to be performed. It may be possible for more than one process to be the bottleneck. The key function of bottleneck analysis is to identify processes that take maximum time and make some structural efforts to minimize process cycle time and improve the productivity or efficiency of processes.

Bottleneck operation is not only used for manufacturing processes but is also successfully applied in supply chains, food industries, service sectors, logistics services, and many more.
Let’s understand the bottleneck process with the practical examples as per mention below.

There is one manufacturing operation and 4 subprocesses as per attached in the above image. Each process has different cycle times such as 10, 15, 17, and 12 sec. manufacturing sequence of sub-processes is P1 to P4 or left to right.

Now to identifying bottleneck operation review the maximum time-consuming process out of 4 processes. The answer to the bottleneck process is P – 3.

Types of bottleneck

There are four types of bbottlenecksin manufacturing processes as per listed below.

1. Short-term bottleneck

Short-term bottleneck means the position of the bottleneck is change over certain period due to technical or managerial reasons for a particular process or operation. The key reason for short-term bottlenecks is a process or machine’s lower performance due to machine breakdown, machine parts unavailability, consumable unavailability, operator health issue, and many more. whenshort-termm bottlenecks happened in operational processes inventory will be increases and work to be pending until issues will be resolved.

2. Long-term bottleneck

Long-term bottleneck means the position of the bottleneck is not change the certain period. the probable possibility of long-term bottleneck is cycle time is large compared to other processes.

3. Internal Bottleneck

The internal bottleneck is defined as when market demand is more than internal or process capacity. In internal bottleneck, organization requires to focus on an improved internal systems.

4. External Bottleneck

The external bottleneck is defined as when internal or process capacity is more than market demand. The organization is required to focus on getting more demand and fulfilling operational capacity with the demand.

Many organizations are very successful to minimize bottleneck operations during production processes but forgot to focus on minimizing finished goods inventory or product sales. If we continuously focused on improving operational cycle time and throughput time but converted to finished goods inventory, not be any benefits to the organization. At end of the any improvement activity organization requires to focus on the impact on revenue age.

How to improve bottleneck processes or operations?

We understood what is bottleneck with practical examples and its various types and its impact on organizational processes. Now it’s time to discuss improvement plans to minimize bottleneck processes or operations.

Let’s understand lean manufacturing tools co-relate with each other. If you applied one lean manufacturing tool to operational processes that can be directly or indirectly co-related with other tools. To improve bottleneck processes, the very first task is to understand the process with the help of work-study. The second part is to apply single minutes of exchange dies, kaizen, poka yoke, and other useful lean manufacturing tools to systematically analyze and improve the process. It the very important to understand bottleneck types and their practical application.

When the organization is focused to improve all processes the end goal is to maximize the output of the process with minimizing bottlenecks. When the improvement team is continuously focused to improve processes bottlenecks are continuously shifting. Now let’s understand the concept of bottleneck shifting.

What is the shifting bottleneck?

Shifting bottleneck means bottleneck position is periodically changed. In another word bottleneck are not steady with the same processes, processes change constantly. In the majority of cases the organization is focused to improve processes and throughput shifting bottleneck case is visible. If the cycle time difference of each process is small that case more chance for the visibility of shifting bottleneck cases and vice versa.

For a better understanding review the attached image. In case – 1 bottleneck process is P – 3. And case – 2 bottleneck process is P – 2. if, case – 2 is measured after improvement so the bottleneck is shifting in case – 2.