Case type 11
Operations and process improvement
Something runs slow or costly; walk the process, compare it with demand, find the real bottleneck, and put a value on fixing it.
17 min1 lesson Last reviewed
Start the lesson Operations and process improvement
How do you approach an operations or process improvement case?
- Map the process step by step with the capacity of each step, find the bottleneck, fix it, then look for the next constraint.
- The most common mistake: improving steps that are not the bottleneck, which adds cost without adding output.
- Map the steps and their capacities, compare with demand, find the step that limits output, and put a money value on fixing it before proposing any spend.
By the end you will be able to
- Walk a process step by step and find the bottleneck
- Check demand before fixing capacity
- Put a money value on an improvement and use Little's Law for waiting times