Bottleneck: When One Problem Ruins The System
“When all think alike, then no one is thinking.” —Walter Lippmann
MENTAL MODEL
A bottleneck is an engineering concept where the performance of an entire system is limited by a single component. This component is the bottleneck itself. The term is a metaphor of the neck of the bottle, where the flow of liquid is limited to how wide its neck is. A bottleneck can be anything: weak forearms when trying to do pullups, a processor too slow to handle a graphics card, or a project manager with a team stronger than their leadership ability. Tracing this bottleneck and solving it results in big, system-wide improvements.
The primary idea of a bottleneck is that one process in a chain limits the capacity of the entire system. The result is stagnation and an underutilization of the other components. Take, for example, lacking muscular development in the forearms as a weightlifter. You might have a back strong enough to do countless pullups and a chest capable of bench pressing hundreds of pounds. But your forearms multiply your capacity by zero: your forearms are too weak to hold you onto the pullup bar for long, and the lack of muscle means you cannot hold a barbell stably enough to bench press a lot of weight. Thus despite being strong, your forearms render you holistically weak. Recognizing and addressing such bottlenecks as quickly as possible is crucial to optimize performance and achieve continuous improvement.
The capacity or speed of one step is lower than the rest of the process. In a factory, if one machine processes items slower than the others, it becomes a bottleneck that sets a limit on overall production. Much like the flow of a river is constrained by its narrowest point, so the performance of a system is determined by its slowest component. The weakest link in the chain tells you how strong the chain is. The issue is that some bottlenecks are not apparent and hard to spot and stop. A delay in decision-making or inefficient communication channels in a company can act as an example.
The consequences typically result in accumulation, lower throughput, the underutilization of a system, and wait times. When input comes in faster than the speed of the process, accumulation occurs. Think of a tasks list accumulating as an inefficient employee cannot get through them fast enough. Since the production line is linked to other machines, the overall throughput is lowered. The employee might be a designer who receives frameworks from the software engineer. So when they don’t get their work done, the next step—the marketing team—does not get to perform at their best, either. The entire team is not utilized, and there’s a delay. Overall, the weakest machine is overstressed, while the rest of the factory is underutilized, resulting in an unproductive mishmash.
How bottlenecks manifest in context:
Business: manufacturing: a single slow workstation reduces the output of the entire assembly line; service: if customer support takes too long to respond due to insufficient staffing, customer satisfaction suffers despite fast processes elsewhere;
Project: a project can be delayed if a critical task on which others are dependent isn’t done on time; overloaded team members or clogged communications channels hinder overall progress;
Software and information technology: system performance: a slow server or suboptimal algorithm can become a bottleneck in a high-traffic application, slowing down the entire software; development: a cumbersome review or design process can delay code deployment even when the software team is fast;
Personal productivity: time: spending excessive time on minor details can derail overall project completion; decision-making: indecisiveness and waiting for perfect situations or information can act as a bottleneck in personal progress.
How to identify bottlenecks: (1) map the process, creating a flowchart, connection circle, or other process map that outlines each step in the system to better see which step might be causing a delay, backlog, or resource strain; (2) measure performance, using data to track the speed, capacity, or throughput of each of the components you outlined, with the aim to identify where things slow down; (3) seek feedback, engaging with team members or users to understand where the difficulty or delay is, as sometimes a bottleneck isn’t part of a machine or software but in human communication or decisiveness; (4) examine how variable process times are—if they change a lot, that might be a sign of a bottleneck.
How to deal with them: (1) increase capacity, adding staff or better equipment to the stage where the delay occurs, such as by hiring more agents for an overwhelmed customer support team; (2) streamline processes, simplifying or re-engineering the process at the bottleneck in aim to improve efficiency, like by eliminating unnecessary steps; (3) redistribute the workload to prevent one part of the system from being overburdened, like delegating tasks to avoid overloading a single team member; (4) monitor and adjust, as when one bottleneck is resolved, another may emerge; (5) create buffers and queues—inventory, waiting lists, maximum customer amounts—to smooth out the flow and make sure processing speeds remain consistent.
Bottlenecks determine the performance of the system. Any system. Identifying and alleviating them unlocks significant improvements in efficiency and output. If your processes have bottlenecks, regard them as your leverage points. Solve these before you solve others. This is your top 20 percent, your vital few, your priority. Eliminate non-value activities.