Bottlenecki

Bottlenecki is a term used in systems thinking to describe a point in a process or network where capacity is insufficient relative to demand, thereby limiting overall performance. The bottleneck determines the maximum possible throughput of the entire system and often creates queues or delays upstream of the constriction.

Origin and usage: The word is a coined term that extends the traditional notion of a bottleneck by emphasizing its presence as a defining constraint across diverse domains. Since its emergence in contemporary operations research and systems engineering literature, bottlenecki has been applied to manufacturing lines, software pipelines, transportation networks, and ecological or biological transport processes.

Characteristics: A bottlenecki is typically characterized by high resource utilization near capacity, longer cycle times at the constrained step, and accumulation of work-in-process upstream. Its position may shift with changes in demand, process changes, or variation in input quality. An intervention that alleviates a bottlenecki tends to increase overall throughput disproportionately.

Applications: In manufacturing, bottlenecki analysis guides line balancing and capacity planning. In IT and software, it identifies critical paths in processing pipelines. In logistics, it locates slow links in supply chains. In biology or ecology, similar concepts describe rate-limiting steps in metabolic or transport networks.

Identification methods: Techniques include discrete-event simulation, value-stream mapping, queuing theory metrics, and Little's law to estimate work-in-process and throughput. Sensitivity analysis helps predict how system performance responds to changes at the constrained point.

Related concepts include bottleneck, constraint, throughput, and queuing theory.