What's the Difference Between Constraints and Bottlenecks?

What's the Difference Between Constraints and Bottlenecks?

Constraint and bottleneck are different concepts:
- A constraint is a restriction of a process, it might be, equipment, people, specifications, materials, enviroment, policies, suppliers.
Being a restriction, these constraints do not allow to meet the customer demand or any other customer key requirement by not being "capable" (in terms of capacity).
For the whole process to flow as expected in order to obtain a daily production rate versus customer demand you can not produce or sell more than the constraint is capable to give.
Do not let a constraint dictate your throughput, fix the constraint to meet the desired throughput, once you have fixed the internal constraints, be prepared to meet the mother of all constraints: the market.
- A bottleneck on the other hand is simply caused by bad management of a process.

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		5 Wil Thomas Manager, United States
	Sometimes a Constraint is Used to Create a Bottleneck I will point out that even if we have a "market constraint", we still need an internal management to... Sign up

		2 Juergen Kanz, Germany
	Is the Market the Real Constraint? I suggest to identify the internal constraint at first. The so called Capacity Constrained Resources... Sign up

		1 Salvador Pena Business Consultant, Mexico
	Bottleneck versus Constraint Hi, I agree, bottleneck and constraint concepts are different. A bottleneck has the lowest capacity ... Sign up

		2 Kunal A Bhat Consultant, India
	Constraint versus Bottleneck A constraint is a limitation that the system has. A bottleneck is where a system underperforms due ... Sign up