“Maharaj, your plant runs 12 hours daily. Still profits are flat?”
Maharaj replied, “Yes! Machines are fully occupied.”
Tenali asked for data.
“Here’s what I see:
• Machine A utilisation: 95%
• Machine B utilisation: 52%
• Average order delay: 18 days
• Overtime cost: INR 22,000/month
• Pending orders: INR 3.6 lakh”
Maharaj said, “We are overloaded!”
Tenali shook his head. “No… you are unbalanced.”
“Machine A is your bottleneck. Everything queues there.”
“But Machine B is half idle!” Maharaj argued.
“Exactly. You’re optimizing efficiency… not flow.”
Tenali continued:
“This is a Theory of Constraints (TOC) issue.
Your entire profit depends on the slowest resource.”
Maharaj paused. “So running all machines doesn’t mean higher output?”
“Correct. Your system moves at the speed of Machine A.”
“What should I do?”
“Three steps:
• Prioritize high-contribution jobs on Machine A
• Shift/pre-process work to Machine B
• Reduce unnecessary load on the bottleneck”
Maharaj nodded slowly. “We were measuring utilisation… not throughput.”
Tenali smiled. “Maharaj, in business, the slowest point decides the fastest growth.”