February 7th, 2019

Process Analysis and Improvement

 Metrics of use
o Throughput rate or flow rate (R)
 Rate at which units are flowing through the system
 In terms of time
 Example
 Patients seen per day
 Patients seen by physician per hour
 (Number of units)/(unit of time)
o Inventory (I)
 All flow units
 All units within the process boundary
o Flow Time (T)
 Time it takes for one unit to go from the beginning to the end of a
process
o Process cost
o In an optimal system
 R*T = I (Little’s Law)
 Even when things are messy and complicated, Little’s Law still applies
ON AVERAGE

Cafeteria Example

MACRO VIEW
 People going in then people come out
o 120 go in and eventually 120 have to leave
o Flow rate (R) (throughput)
 120 customers/hr
o Inventory (I)
 40 customers
o T = I/R
 T = 40/120
 T= 20 minutes
Little’s Law
 Throughput Rate
o Requires both units and unit of time
 Focus on flows, not snapshots
 Process must be stable
o A stable process has a “rate at which are coming in is = to the rate at
which things are coming out”
o Unstable processes have other issues to worry about
 Average customer turnover
February 7th, 2019

o How many times do you have times do you have to turn over the average
inventory to generate average sales?
o Inverse of (T)
 1/T
 Consistent units
 Long-term averages used
 The system is in steady state
 We count the same items when measuring stock
 You can break the overall system into smaller ones
o Apply Little’s Law separately as long as the inventory is the same in each
separate case
 Add them together in the end
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