BottleNeck Definition :
A bottleneck is a phenomenon where the performance or capacity of an entire system is limited by a single or limited number of components or resources. The term bottleneck is taken from the 'assets are water' metaphor. 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. By increasing the width of the bottleneck one can increase the rate at which the water flows out of the neck at different frequencies. Such limiting components of a system are sometimes referred to as bottleneck points.
A bottleneck in project management is one process in a chain of processes, such that its limited capacity reduces the capacity of the whole chain.
Related concepts in project management are:
- Critical path method
- Theory of Constraints
And an example is the lack of smelter and refinery supply which cause bottlenecks upstream.
Another example is in a Surface Mount Technology (SMT) Board Assembly Line with several equipments aligned, usually the common sense is driven to set up and shift the bottleneck element towards the end of the process, inducing the better and faster machines to always keep the PCB supply flowing up, never allowing the slower ones to fully stop, a fact that would be heeded as a deleterious and significant overall drawback on the process.
Bottleneck occurs in decision making process.
Four bottlenecks that may occur:
- Global versus Local
- Center versus Business Unit
- Function versus Function
- Inside versus Outside Partners
Using JMeter we can able to identify the bottleneck of the problem by combining the tool using Visual VM
