Bottleneck_Paper

  Bottleneck in a process paper OPS/571 corey smith 11/19/2012 Ricky write Lots of businesses face situations that cause a decline in productivity and sales. When discussing the bottleneck in a process or BIP this happens when information, materials or assets come in faster than the previous steps before receiving those items causing an overload or companies to fall behind in productivity or sales and structure. The BIP term compares information, products, materials, and labor hours with soda in a bottle. When soda is poured out of a bottle, it has to travel pass the bottle's neck. The bigger the bottle's neck, the more soda (info., materials, assets etc..) you can come through. The thinner the bottle's neck, the less you can pour out which causes a overload, or "bottleneck." There are two main types of bottlenecks which are short term and long term bottlenecks. Short term bottlenecks are caused by temporary problems. A good example is when key team members become is sick and is gone for a short period of time. No one else is capable to take over their projects, which causes a backlog (BIP) in their work until they return. Long term bottlenecks occur all the time. An example would be when a company's month-end reporting process is delayed every month, because one person has to complete multiple tasks in order to get the information needed for the next person to complete the assignment. The other person can't even start until they have the final month-end figures. The Theory of Constraints (TOC) was designed by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt in 1984 (Chase, R. B., Jacobs, F. R., & Aquilano, N. J. 2006). The “Theory of Constraints” is based on the thought of using scientific ethics and reason to lead human-based companies in their decision-making processes. The goal of the Theory of Constraints is to help company’s achieve their goals and, more importantly, continue doing so through changing times. Plainly put, the Theory of Constraints is a method for change. The Theory of Constraints in the retail industry is based on a set of basic principles. These principles are used through a set of basic processes in specific fields, including: Operations, project management, sales & marketing, distribution and customer service. Every company has speed bumps or constraints, which confines its performance and prohibits them from reaching the company’s goals. In order to improve the performance of the company, the constraint must be recognized and managed according to one of the processes involved in the method. As with any situation, over time the constraint may change, either because the initial constraint was successfully managed, or because a changing environment has left the organization with a new constraint. At any rate, the constraint management process is repetitive. I am a manager in the retail industry. Our biggest issues are completing the warehouse truck in a timely manner, completing necessary count, and keeping our overstock clean and organized. In discussing the warehouse truck we have one stock guy that is responsible for the truck being put up. Sometimes he can’t come in till later in the day which means our truck is not 100% put up. There are other times when we have had call outs and the stock guy had to cover a register. Both of these issues causes a BIP and we are carrying work over till the next business day. We have added another stock guy that is mainly in maintenance but he helps with stocking on key business days. We have crossed trained half of our staff to work in multiple departments to guarantee if we have someone out we will still be equally productive. The inventory counts for our company can be overwhelming taking the majority of your day to complete. We have to perform counts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday or every week. The managers have a hard time trying to finish count and manage the store daily. A lot of the counts were put on the second shift manager to complete making him behind on daily maintenance of the store. Using the The Theory of Constraints, the company decided to create a Retail sales specialist position. This person performs daily counts as well as helping with working out overstock daily on the sales floor. We were having lots of issues with keeping our backroom organized. This is because employees were working back stock and just throwing it back in an empty space in the stockroom. We have now added separate bins for each aisle in the store. This makes it quicker to work back stock in the store. Everything that is back stock for a certain aisle is in its designated bin and you never have to go searching for product locations. In closing, using BIP and TOC my company is able to determine the problem areas of our operations and where the big issues arise in the completion of projects. Using these strategies we will be able to keep a competitive edge and provide our customer with better customer service and time References: Chase, R. B., Jacobs, F. R., & Aquilano, N. J. (2006). Operations management for competitive advantage (11th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill/Irwin.