Patent ID: 7711589

Claim:
A bottleneck determination system, comprising a computer programmed to: receive and store on a computer readable medium information regarding sequential processes, each of the sequential processes having an action that results in producing a product and that must occur in order to produce a finished product; determine and store on a computer readable medium a beginstock amount for each of the sequential processes, the beginstock amount for at least one of the sequential processes being approximately equal to a number of pieces of the product available at the beginning of a time period for use in executing an immediate next one of the sequential processes; determine and store on a computer readable medium a production amount for each of the sequential processes, the production amount for at least one of the sequential processes being approximately equal to a number of products produced during the time period; determine and store on a computer readable medium a spoilage amount for each of the sequential processes, the spoilage amount for at least one of the sequential processes being approximately equal to a number of pieces of the product that were deemed unsuitable during the time period; determine a netproduction value for each of the sequential processes, the netproduction value for at least one of the sequential processes being the production amount minus the spoilage amount; determine a netoutput value for each of the sequential processes, the netoutput value for at least one of the sequential processes being the production amount plus the beginstock amount minus the spoilage amount; identify subsequent sequential processes from among the sequential processes, the subsequent sequential processes being those sequential processes that have at least one preceeding process, and determine an input value for each subsequent sequential process, the input value for at least one of the subsequent sequential processes being a lowest netoutput value for sequential processes that precede the at least one of the subsequent sequential processes; determine an inputabundance value for each of the sequential processes, the inputabundance value for at least one of the sequential processes being the input value minus the netproduction value; select processes having an inputabundance value greater than zero to provide a selected group of processes; determine output values for the processes in the selected group, the output value for at least one of the processes in the selected group being the netoutput value plus the beginstock amounts of subsequent processes; select a bottleneck process from the selected group, the bottleneck process having an output value that is lowest of all the output values.