MBA Boot Camp: Process Thinking & Bottlenecks (6.2)
Concepts & Vocabulary
Process Mapping: Creating a visual diagram of the sequence of steps needed to produce an output.
Throughput: The amount of material or items passing through a system or process over a specific period of time.
Bottleneck: The single step in a process that has the lowest capacity, thereby slowing down the entire system.
Core Lesson: The Theory of Constraints
In the 1980s, Eliyahu Goldratt introduced The Theory of Constraints. The core idea is simple but profound: Any system is only as fast as its slowest bottleneck.
Imagine a coffee shop:
Step 1: Cashier takes the order (Capacity: 60/hour)
Step 2: Barista makes the coffee (Capacity: 30/hour)
Step 3: Server hands it to the customer (Capacity: 60/hour)
The throughput of this entire shop is NOT 60 coffees an hour. It is exactly 30. The barista is the bottleneck. If you hire a second cashier to take orders faster, you haven't helped the business at all; you've just created a massive traffic jam of angry customers waiting for the barista. To improve the business, you must improve the bottleneck.
Application & Reflection
At the library, one of the ways that we improved the bottleneck of getting new cards to community members was by offering an online application, in addition to the in-person application. This meant that we could remove the barriers that sometimes existed for in-person application, such as time to stop in, time to fill out an application if a child or two were running around, or the sense of guilt someone might feel by holding up the circulation line to complete the process.
Online applications allowed users to fill out their card request on their own time, in their own setting, and we mailed the card to them. After initiating this approach, library card applications for the next several months increased substantially when compared with the average of previous years for those months.
