Ops 571 Week Six Operations and Supply Chain Management, Ch. 20 Discussion Questions 3 & 4

Bottlenecks

According to Jacobs & Chase (2011,p.688), a bottleneck is a constraint within the system that limits throughput. I can easily relate to this because, we are experiencing this issue at my place of work, which is an agency. The bottleneck that was being created stemmed from the personnel in charge of the physical therapy notes. The notes were not being retrieved from the various physical therapy companies we contract with, as a result of this, when the patient's episode ends, another 2-3 weeks will go by before the therapy notes are brought in or faxed in, this all delay cash flow to the agency as the agency cannot send out the final claims on this patients until all the notes are in. I had to come up with a process improvement plan, and ever since we implemented this , things have been going on smoothly , as the notes are coming in right after the initial assessment, and every week, the employee in charge of the therapy notes, call all the various therapy companies to have them fax in their progress notes for visits that have been completed.
Jacobs , F.R. & Chase, R. ( 2011). Operations & Supply Chain Management. ( 13th ed.) . Boston , MA : McGraw-Hill .Irwin. Retrieved from the
      University of Phoenix eBook Collection database. p.688.

Time Components

The Time components of the production cycle time are very important in the manufacturing industry as if one of the components takes too long, the others will be affected and production maybe slowed or delayed and this will affect the ability of the company to meet its goal, which is , making money.
As we all know, the Goal of a firm is to make money ( Jacobs & Chase, 2011,p.684 ). Goldratt argues that, although an organization may have many purposes- providing jobs, consuming raw materials, increasing sales, increasing share of the market, developing technology, or producing high-quality products- these do not guarantee long-term survival of the firm, as they are means to achieve the...