Find Your Bottleneck
Map a simple workflow. Change one step. See whether completed output can increase under your assumptions.
1. Define your workflow
Use the same completed-output unit and period for every rate. Enter effective capacity, not how busy the team looks.
2. Change one capacity
3. Read the whole-system result
A ceiling under this simplified model, not a forecast of actual deliveries or profit.
Two pages. Fillable worksheet and a completed teaching example. Free to download; no email required.
A test to run next
- Check the suspected limit against completed output and where work waits.
- Protect useful time at that step before adding equipment or people.
- Run a small change and measure the full customer result.
- Repeat: a different step may become the limit.
Assumptions and limits
One serial workflow; every completed unit visits every step once. Demand and capacities are steady, with effective rates already adjusted for downtime and yield. Output ceiling = the smallest of demand and the step capacities. Parallel branches, shared staff, variable queues, product mix and feedback loops require a richer model. Tied limits mean improving only one may leave output unchanged.
Framework: Theory of Constraints Institute — Five Focusing Steps. The arithmetic model and fictional café/support examples are HBW teaching tools.