How do you find process bottlenecks?

Direct answer

What a strong answer covers

How it works

A bottleneck is the step whose capacity limits the throughput of the whole process, and it is found by measurement rather than complaint. For each step, gather arrival rate, processing time, waiting time before it, work in progress piled in front of it, rework sent back to it, and available capacity. The constraint is where queues grow and utilisation stays near 100 percent; improving any other step just moves the pile. Once found, the options are to protect the constraint from waste, add capacity to it, or move work away from it, and the effect is confirmed by throughput and cycle time, not by activity.

Example

In a claims process the loudest complaints were about the intake form, but the data showed intake took a day while medical review had 400 claims waiting and each reviewer was fully booked; review was the constraint. Routing simple claims past review with a rules check and clearing incomplete files before they reached reviewers raised weekly throughput by 35 percent without touching the form.

Common mistakes

• Optimising the step people complain about instead of the one with the queue.
• Measuring processing time only and ignoring waiting time, which is usually larger.
• Adding capacity everywhere at once so the gain cannot be attributed.

A useful answer structure

Answer from your own work.

Do not memorise a script: use only examples you can explain honestly in follow-up questions.