Identifying and managing your bottleneck resources
Samuel Akinniyi Ajiboyede
Digital Skills & CleanTech Advocate | Tech Innovator | Digital Transformation Expert | Author & Host of 'The Entrepreneur's Diary'
Identifying and managing your bottleneck resources
Do you know that one employee that is almost always needed around, but hardly ever free to take on new tasks? Well, that is your bottleneck resource.
Bottleneck resources generally refer to any resources (both human and material) that are always in high demand but short in supply. But my discussion is going to focus on the human bottleneck resources.
The employees who are your bottleneck resources are those ones that have a role to play in practically every step or role in the production process (both for products for services). You can hardly think of much you would do without having someone in that role. They are a key part of your process and can easily clog the entire process just the same way they can ease up the process through their input.
They could be the editor in an online blog or the data analyst in an analytical firm. Because of how important their role is in each of the processes, there is always a tendency to overwork the employees in this role and this is what I want to talk about here.
Bottlenecks define your throughput, i.e., the amount and pace of work moving through the system or process. As such, it’s important to closely monitor their utilization to ensure they don’t get overloaded, causing a gridlock.
The very fact that they are important is the reason to not let them get maxed out. Create thresholds for them and stick to them. By thresholds, I mean that you should know the optimal number of hours they can spend working on projects in a week, and keep them on an 80% productivity so that performance does not suffer.
If your bottleneck resource can give say… 10 hours to projects in a week, keep him on 8 hours so that you do not max out on him. If you have more projects coming in, then get more hands in that role. Don’t be tempted to overwork this staff by insisting that new projects get started earlier or (s)he works overtime.
If your bottleneck resource gets maxed out, you could end up using up to a month to complete a project that should have been done in a week.
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3 年Great point Samuel Akinniyi Ajiboyede!
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3 年Love reading your post, Samuel Akinniyi Ajiboyede
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3 年Well done Sam
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3 年Great read Samuel Akinniyi Ajiboyede