(2018-01-21) Ching Grove What Are Bottlenecks

Clarke Ching: What are Bottlenecks? (per Andy Grove)

In 1983 - the year before The Goal (Eli Goldratt) was published - Grove published a book, High Output Management, aimed at teaching middle managers some of the management principles Grove had learned during his time at Intel. He started his book with a deceptively simple manufacturing example that illustrates the idea and importance of bottlenecks—or limiting-steps, as he calls them.

his example was based on work he did as a hotel waiter while studying chemistry. He used the example of serving a breakfast made up of coffee, toast, and a three-minute boiled egg.

He started his scheduling by looking for what he called the limiting step. In this case, it’s the longest step

Now, that’s great if you’re cooking one egg. But you’re not. You’re in a hotel, and you have to feed dozens of guests each morning. And most of them want eggs.

In other words, in this scenario, the egg boiling is not the limiting step—it’s the toaster