Bottlenecks

Bottlenecks

Overview

A cell or operation becomes a bottleneck when it throttles the line flow. This happens when both downstream and upstream cells wait for the cell in question.



The Linecraft bottlenecks algorithm abstracts away internal asset efficiency and wait times and aggregates serial and parallel paths within a cell.



You can access the bottlenecks module from the main menu by clicking on the “Bottlenecks” card

The bottlenecks page consists of bottleneck cells’ summary, bottleneck visualization and bottleneck causes’ timeline.


Bottleneck cells' summary


The bottlenecks cell summary section shows you a list of all the cells that are bottlenecks on your line, ranked from most impact to least impact. Impact is the severity or magnitude of bottleneck in terms of the percentage of time it makes the adjacent cells wait. Bottleneck cells can be viewed at different intervals. To view the best results for bottlenecks, select 2 weeks interval from the calendar dropdown. This is the default date range as well.

Each cell in this list provides you the following information:
  1. Name of the cell
  2. JPH loss when the cell was a bottleneck
  3. Bottleneck hours: Time (in hours) when the cell was a bottleneck
  4. Bottleneck impact: Impact on availability, performance and quality during bottleneck hours of the cell


Each bottleneck cell may have one or more bottleneck assets. To view these assets the their details, you can click on the “View bottleneck assets” button on the list of bottleneck cells. The number in parentheses highlights the number of bottleneck assets of the bottleneck cell.


The view opportunities button will show you the opportunities to reduce the impact of the selected bottleneck cell or asset. 

Bottleneck visualization

Bottleneck visualization shows how long the bottleneck is making the other cells wait. The cells across the line show the direction of waits and their relative excess wait times. Cells that are bottlenecks will be highlighted red. There can be multiple bottlenecks in an interval.


Bottleneck causes timeline

The timeline indicates all the intervals in which the selected cell is a bottleneck. The colors correspond to the cause of the cell being a bottleneck.


The legend to understand the colors denoted in the timeline are as follows:


Bottleneck verification

Clicking on verify from the timeline for a cell or an interval will show an asset diagram with the self-performance and availability of each asset as well as the adjacent waits for the selected cell and interval. This helps point out which asset or assets are the problem in that interval and why.

Hover on an asset to view its availability, self performance and totals waits.


If you select 1 asset from the total waits diagram, you will see drilldowns for cycles and downtime details. These will take you to the cycles and downtime details for the selected asset in the selected interval.



If you select 2 or more assets from the total waits diagram, you will see a drilldown for interactions. This will take you to the interactions for the selected assets in the selected interval.


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