Throughput Accounting

Hi John

In the Dec 14 F5 paper, there was a question which required the calculative proof of a bottleneck.

This was a hairdressing salon and we had to calculate the total output capacity of three members of staff/three processes. There were two products, and the hairstylist had the lowest output capacity for both products and was clearly the bottleneck because it limited the total volume of throughput (and total throughput contribution) achievable by having the lowest capacity for each product.

Could there be a case where the process/machine hours which has the lowest capacity on one product, does not have the lowest capacity on another?

If this were the case i.e. one machine may limit the production of Car A, but another limits the production of Car B – how would we identify, which of the two of them is the bottleneck?

Thank you again.