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The bottleneck that sets a process's pace

If one required stage in a process has less capacity than the others, speeding up another stage may not increase finished output. That limiting stage is a bottleneck, though demand, shared resources, and changing conditions can complicate a real process.

8–10 min

Questions you could explore

  • How could an improvement move the bottleneck somewhere else?
  • How would you identify the stage limiting the number of finished kits per hour?

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