Bottleneck (production)

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In production and project management, a bottleneck is a process in a chain of processes, such that its limited capacity reduces the capacity of the whole chain. The result of having a bottleneck are stalls in production, supply overstock, pressure from customers, and low employee morale. There are both short and long-term bottlenecks. Short-term bottlenecks are temporary and are not normally a significant problem. An example of a short-term bottleneck would be a skilled employee taking a few days off. Long-term bottlenecks occur all the time and can cumulatively significantly slow down production. An example of a long-term bottleneck is when a machine is not efficient enough and as a result has a long queue. An example is the lack of smelter and refinery supply which cause bottlenecks upstream. Another example is in a surface-mount technology board assembly line with several pieces of equipment aligned. Usually the common sense strategy is to set up and shift the bottleneck element towards the end of the process, inducing the better and faster machines to always keep the printed circuit board (PCB) supply flowing up, never allowing the slower ones to fully stop; a strategy that could result in a deleterious (or damaging) and significant, overall drawback in the process.