The Bottleneck Rules: Constraints, Service Scheduling, and Staffing

Covers: Bottlenecks; optimized production technology (OPT) and its principles; nonbottlenecks and capacity-constrained resources; transfer vs. process batches; theory of constraints (internal resource, market, policy constraints; throughput, inventory, operating expense; five steps); service scheduling (appointments, reservations, posted schedules, backlogs); workforce scheduling options; the Tibrewala–Philippe–Brown consecutive-days-off method. Real-world cases: Southwest Airlines' December 2022 meltdown (16,700 cancellations; $140 million penalty).