Bottleneck

As a bottleneck is defined as the condition, function, department, or resource that has the highest utilization in a considered period in the entire process chain, so that the flow is limited and thus represents a capacity limit for a complete system. Similarly Eliyahu Goldratt also defined this phenomenon in his theory of constraints ( theory of constraints ). Changes of the demand situation or the product mix produced, then the bottleneck may shift to another part of the overall system.

As long as the load of the system is considerably less than the capacity of the bottleneck, this is not viewed as problematic (apart from the sub-optimal use once off ). From about 80 per cent of capacity utilization, the behavior of the system is changing and quickly leads to an overload. In production planning such a bottleneck is to be located within the capacity scheduling by applying the method of the critical path in the network planning technique: a production process, which is such a bottleneck, there lies in the critical path.