Limiting Factor

Limitations on floor space, machine time, labors hours or raw materials are common.

Theory of Constraints

1. Outsourcing (subcontracting) all or part of the bottleneck operation.
2. Investing in additional production equipment and employing parallel processing, in which multiple product units undergo the same production operation simultaneously.
3. Working overtime at the bottleneck operation.
4. Retraining employees and shifting them to the bottleneck.
5. Eliminating any non-value-added activities at the bottleneck operation.