Bottlenecksand

Bottlenecksand is a neologism used in discussions of process performance to describe a situation in which several bottlenecks interact across a system to limit throughput. Rather than focusing on a single congested point, bottlenecksand emphasizes that constraints can be distributed across stages and that improvements at one point may reveal or shift others.

The term is informal and appears mainly in industry blogs and practitioner literature; there is no single agreed-upon definition in formal academic sources. Conceptually, bottlenecksand aligns with systems thinking and the theory of constraints by recognizing that throughput is governed by multiple interlinked constraints.

Applications occur in manufacturing, software development, logistics, and service operations. For example, upgrading one machine in a factory may move the bottleneck downstream; in software, architecture, reviews, testing, and deployment can each constrain cycle time; in supply chains, supplier lead times, transport, and warehousing often combine to limit flow.

Measurement and management rely on throughput, cycle time, work-in-progress, and buffer levels, supported by tools such as value-stream mapping, queuing theory, and finite-capacity scheduling to identify concurrent bottlenecks and coordinate improvements.

Because bottlenecksand is not a standardized term, its use should be defined clearly within a given context. See also bottleneck, theory of constraints, throughput, lean manufacturing, and process optimization.