The Bottleneck Rules How to get more done (when working harder isn't working)

Authors	published	Link
Clarke Ching	2018	Find the book here

Summary

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People overlook bottlenecks for various reasons:

• They do not know that bottlenecks exist.
• The bottlenecks are devious bastards, so they ignore them.
• The bottlenecks move around, so they are hard to catch.

Throughout the book the author tells us several stories about where he encountered bottlenecks of different kinds, how they used the FOCCCUS formula to handle it and how the results have been.

The stories seem a little too simple at some points, but this is not because handling bottlenecks is easy and intuitive.

The author therefore tells the story of the egg of columbus making the point that, yes, in hindsight bottlenecks are clear to see and the solution is obvious. But this is only because of a psychological phenomenon which is called "hindsight bias". Just like the solution to the egg problem is very clear in hindsight.

We are presented with 5 different kinds of bottlenecks:

1. The wild bottleneck
   The wild bottleneck is most often hidden and not managed or poorly managed.
2. The tamed bottleneck
   A tamed bottleneck has a capacity that is too low, but it has been discovered and is now visible and managed.
3. The right-stuff bottleneck
   Right-stuff bottlenecks are tamed, and their work is curated so they work on the right stuff.
4. The right-place bottleneck
   Right-place bottlenecks are tamed, and they are where they are supposed to be. E.g. in a hotel the bottleneck should be the number of rooms, not the number of parking spaces or the number of breakfasts the hotel can serve.
5. The deliberate bottlenecks
   Deliberate bottlenecks are there to control the throughput of some kind. For example in airport coordination to make sure that the landing lanes have enough availability for the incoming planes.

The author demonstrates the usage of the FOCCCUS-Formular which is a rewording of Goldratts method to handle bottlenecks.

• Find
  the bottleneck. What do you want more of?
• Optimize
  the bottleneck, meaning local optimization. Do the people have enough of what they need?
• Coordinate
  Find the resources that wait for the bottleneck to complete and find the resources that add to the queue.
  Constrain the resources in front of the bottleneck to move at the speed of the bottleneck so you release the time back into the time that they can use for other things.
  Make a list of everybody and everything that has free time in front of and after the bottleneck.
• Collaborate
  Look at your list and ask the people and think about the resources:
  Can they take over tasks from the bottleneck?
  Can they simply do other things so to increase productivity elsewhere?
  
• Curate
  Make sure your bottleneck does the most valuable stuff first.
  Maybe find ways to reduce the amount of things that are needed to process?
• Update
  If you have not enough optimization now, think about financial investments. Can you hire more people? Can you buy additional equipment?
• Start over (strategically)
  Watch how your throughput develops. Is your bottleneck still there, or has it moved? Where is the bottleneck now?