Business Case Studies & Business Publications

Bottlenecks and Utilization: Capacity 2

Chao, Raul O., Gol...

Technical Note

Bottlenecks and Utilization: Capacity 2

Chao, Raul O.; Goldberg, Rebecca

OM-1650 | Published September 25, 2025 | 3 Pages Technical Note

Collection: Darden School of Business

Add To Cart Buy Now

Product Details

This technical note is part of a set that focuses on understanding bottlenecks and learning how to identify one, and on measuring resource and capacity utilization. While designed to be used together, these three notes can also be used as stand-alone documents to support particular learning objectives. The other notes in this set are “Bottlenecks and Utilization: Bottlenecks” (UVA-OM-1648) and “Bottlenecks and Utilization: Resource Utilization” (UVA-OM-1649). These materials form one module in our collection of introductory operations management topics, and all are appropriate for an advanced undergraduate- or graduate-level introductory course on operations management. The complete list of the materials in this collection is available in the teaching materials included with this technical note.

1. Explore the concept of a bottleneck, including how to identify a bottleneck and the implications of the bottleneck on the throughput rate and the capacity of the process. 2. Demonstrate how to calculate the resource utilization of each stage in the process, as well as of the entire process. 3. Explore how capacity calculations can differ when stages are combined, or when a worker’s time is split across multiple stages.