A MANET FIELD GUIDE · OPERATIONS
Find the bottleneck hiding in your everyday work.
One slow handoff can make an entire team feel understaffed. Before buying software or redesigning a department, follow one real piece of work from request to completion.
How do you identify a process bottleneck?
Start with a recent example of the work, not the official procedure. Trace it from the moment someone asks for it until the result reaches them. At each step, ask who owns the next move, what they need, how long the work waits, and what sends it backward. The bottleneck is the constraint that repeatedly limits the flow—not necessarily the step that looks busiest.
Run a 30-minute workflow check.
- 01
Pick one recurring request.
Choose a concrete unit of work: a new client setup, an approval, a report, or an invoice. Use a recent example and include the people who actually handle it.
- 02
Mark the journey.
List each handoff from start to finish. Note where information arrives incomplete, gets entered twice, waits for a decision, or returns for correction. Write down the real tools used, including inboxes and spreadsheets.
- 03
Separate work time from waiting time.
A five-minute approval that sits in a queue for two days is primarily a waiting problem. Ask for typical elapsed time and actual effort at each step; do not treat an unusual case as the average.
- 04
Test the constraint.
Where do items accumulate? What would happen if that step took half as long? If another queue would immediately become the limit, you may be looking at a symptom rather than the constraint.
- 05
Choose one small change and a measure.
Try a clearer intake requirement, an owner and backup, a decision rule, or a better use of an existing system. Track turnaround time, rework, or backlog for a defined period before expanding the change.
Put a number on repeat work
Estimate the effort before assigning a dollar value.
Monthly rework hours = occurrences per month × average minutes per occurrence ÷ 60.
For illustration, 40 corrections at 15 minutes each equal 10 hours a month. Use your own observed volume and time. This only estimates effort; it does not prove that all of those hours can be recovered or converted to savings. Include the cost of change before making an investment decision.
What should you fix first?
Prioritize a problem that happens frequently, affects a customer or a critical decision, and can be changed without creating a larger risk. A clean handoff or decision rule may help more than an automation. If you cannot agree on the current process, map it before selecting technology.
When the problem crosses teams or systems, a deeper diagnostic can compare opportunities, confirm the baseline, and sequence the work. Explore MANET’s operations and process improvement approach, or see what the MANET Diagnostic includes.