A bottleneck is defined as “a narrow section of road or a junction that impedes traffic flow”.
Or “a situation that causes delay in a process or system”.
Our lives are full of bottlenecks.
Driving in rush hour.
Standing in line at the grocery.
Waiting at the doctor.
Even our work has bottlenecks.
Sometimes the bottleneck is a system.
Other times, the bottleneck can be a person.
Bottlenecks can cause us to adjust our approach and/or to create a workaround.
Shifting our work hours to avoid rush hour, grocery shopping late at night, or arriving late for an appointment assuming you would have to wait if you were on time.
My Story
One of my first engineering projects was to evaluate a bottleneck in a manufacturing plant.
There was one phase in the process where a single person was doing multiple tasks aided by a robot.
I sat for hours on the assembly line documenting the process.
Then, we worked on solutions to reduce the bottleneck.
We couldn’t completely remove it, but time in the process returned.
This taught me to understand a system, break it into parts, and brainstorm ideas to make it better.
I applied the lesson in market research to the flow of customers through a research event.
We needed to look for the bottleneck and then find innovative ways to solve them.
I continue to look for the processes in my life and recognize the bottlenecks.
Day-to-day life at home. Work life. Community projects.
Your Turn
Have you had experience identifying and resolving bottlenecks?
When you think about your life, where do you encounter the most bottlenecks?
Is there one that you control that you could dive into and resolve?