Bottleneck | AllAboutLean.com

Can you tell your Bottleneck from your Inventory?

Christoph Roser — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 11:00:26 +0000

On the shop floor it is common wisdom to find the bottleneck based on the inventory. If the buffer is full, the bottleneck is downstream. If the buffer is empty, the bottleneck is upstream. Is this true? My student Carolin Romeser and I spent quite some time verifying this, and found some interesting results. In ... Read more

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A Critical Look at Goldratt’s Drum-Buffer-Rope Method

Christoph Roser — Sun, 23 Nov 2014 11:00:38 +0000

Eliyahu Goldratt developed different methods on how to manage production systems. These methods are nowadays known as the Theory of Constraints, or TOC for short. One key method described is called Drum-Buffer-Rope, or DBM for short. Similar to Kanban or CONWIP, it aims to constrain the work in progress (WIP) in the system. There is ... Read more

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Bottleneck Management Part 3 – Bottleneck Decoupling and Capacity Improvement

Christoph Roser — Sun, 16 Nov 2014 11:00:24 +0000

Bottleneck detection and management are important in managing or increasing your production capacity. In the first post of this series I talked about fundamentals and improving utilization. The second post looked at the impact of planning on the overall production capacity. This final post in the series will look at the effect of decoupling and the ... Read more

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Bottleneck Management Part 2 – Improve Bottleneck Planning

Christoph Roser — Sun, 09 Nov 2014 11:00:47 +0000

Bottleneck detection and management are important when managing or increasing your production capacity. In the first post of this series, I talked about fundamentals and improving utilization. This second post looks at the impact of planning on the overall production capacity. A third post looks at Bottleneck Decoupling and Capacity Improvement. Just as a quick ... Read more

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Bottleneck Management Part 1 – Introduction and Utilization

Christoph Roser — Sun, 02 Nov 2014 11:00:24 +0000

In the past I’ve written a few posts with some nifty methods on how to find the bottleneck (The Bottleneck Walk – Practical Bottleneck and The Active Period Method), and some warnings of which methods don’t work. In this post I would like to go into more detail on what to do once you find the ... Read more

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The FiFo Calculator – Determining the Size of your Buffers

Christoph Roser — Sun, 14 Sep 2014 11:00:07 +0000

In my previous post, I discussed how to Determine the Size of Your FiFo Lane – The FiFo Formula. My preferred method is still an expert estimate. However, if you are interested in the math, here is a small JavaScript calculator that estimates a FiFo size for two processes. For instructions on how to use ... Read more

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Determining the Size of Your FiFo Lane – The FiFo Formula

Christoph Roser — Sun, 24 Aug 2014 11:00:12 +0000

FiFo lanes are an important tool to establish a pull system. They are often combined with kanban. However, while there is a lot of information on how to calculate the number of kanban (the Kanban Formula), there is very little information available on how large a FiFo should be. In my last post I talked ... Read more

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Theory and Practice on FiFo Lanes – How Does FiFo Work in Lean Manufacturing?

Christoph Roser — Sun, 17 Aug 2014 11:00:35 +0000

FiFo lanes are an important part of any lean material flow. They are a very simple way to define both the material flow and the information flow. In this post I want to tell you why to use FiFo, how to use FiFo, and the advantages of FiFo, as well as show you a few ... Read more

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