Bottleneck

A bottleneck occurs when a part of a process slows down the overall flow because it can handle less work than the other parts. Imagine water flowing through a series of pipes; if one narrow pipe restricts the flow, it causes a backup and reduces the total amount of water that can pass through at once. Similarly, in production or workflows, the stage with the lowest capacity limits the entire process’s speed. Identifying and improving this bottleneck is essential to increase overall efficiency and throughput.