Bottlenecks

Running Head: BOTTLENECKS IN A PROCESS

“As water is poured out of a bottle, the rate of outflow is limited by the width of the conduit of exit - that is, bottleneck. Increase the width of the bottleneck, and you can increase the rate of which the water flows out (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2010). In business, a bottleneck is what hinders the entire process. Once a bottleneck is identified and remedied, the organization becomes more efficient and effective. This paper will identify the bottleneck in the hurricane expense review process and recommend a solution to improve the process.

Bottleneck and Solution

As with every process, there is always one stage that slows down the entire process. In the documents review process, the bottleneck is when the expenses wait for in a queue for the document review staff to begin their review process. The reason the bottleneck is at this stage is simply the lack of manpower that the documents review staff has in comparison to the large amount of expenses that are coming into the queue. There are not enough auditors to review the expenses fast enough. Currently there are six auditors present to review the expenses. On an average, about seventy expenses are sent to the queue everyday. Depending on the complexity of the expense and contracts associated with the expense, an expense can take up to an hour or two to review. It is recommended that three more auditors be added to the documents review staff in order to eliminate the bottleneck at this stage.

The most difficult task is identifying the bottleneck in any process. After careful study and consideration of a process, a solution can often be determined to eliminate or reduce the bottleneck. If the documents review team considers hiring more staff, it is very likely that the review process will become more efficient because more reviews can be completed in a timely manner.

References

Chase, R.B., Jacobs, F.R., & Aquilano, N.J. (2006) Operations management for...