A working paper on process improvement. Every piece carries a worked example with real numbers, set out so a reader can follow the arithmetic and redo it against their own.https://processimprovementdaily.com/en-gb480https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/reading-a-histogram-of-cycle-times/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/reading-a-histogram-of-cycle-times/A histogram of how long things take has four things in it worth acting on, and the average is not one of them. What to look for, and what each shape is telling you.Fri, 09 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMTMetrics and mathsMeasurementDana Okonkwohttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/testing-a-change-before-you-make-it/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/testing-a-change-before-you-make-it/The three ways to find out what a change will do before committing to it, what each costs, and the point at which arithmetic on paper stops being enough.Wed, 07 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMTSimulation and what ifWhat ifTobias Lindqvisthttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/the-queue-nobody-owns/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/the-queue-nobody-owns/Process owners are assigned to the boxes. Most of the elapsed time is in the arrows, and an arrow with no owner is time nobody is accountable for or measuring.Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMTFundamentalsQueueingRosa Delgadohttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/takt-time-when-demand-swings/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/takt-time-when-demand-swings/Takt assumes steady demand and almost nobody has it. The answer is not to abandon it, and it is not to average the year. It is to pick the window you are willing to be wrong in.Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMTLean toolsLine balanceMarcus Halehttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/the-constraint-moves-after-you-fix-it/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/the-constraint-moves-after-you-fix-it/A constraint that is relieved does not disappear, it relocates. Knowing where it goes next is the difference between one improvement and a program of them.Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMTFundamentalsConstraintsDana Okonkwohttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/setup-time-and-the-batch-it-forces/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/setup-time-and-the-batch-it-forces/Time one properly and most of it turns out to be preparation that never needed the machine idle. Move that out and the batch size argument answers itself.Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMTLean toolsBatchingMarcus Halehttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/measuring-a-process-nobody-documented/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/measuring-a-process-nobody-documented/The most common starting position in process work, and the one every method assumes you are not in. A week of deliberately cheap measurement gets you further than a data project.Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMTFundamentalsMeasurementRosa Delgadohttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/pull-push-and-where-inventory-hides/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/pull-push-and-where-inventory-hides/Push builds to a forecast and hides the surplus between steps. Pull builds to a signal and makes the same surplus visible. The second is better, and not for the reason usually given.Wed, 23 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMTLean toolsFlowMarcus Halehttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/littles-law-on-a-hiring-backlog/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/littles-law-on-a-hiring-backlog/Little's Law is usually taught on a factory floor. It works just as well on a hiring pipeline, and it answers the question everybody is arguing about in one line.Mon, 21 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMTMetrics and mathsQueueingDana Okonkwohttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/value-added-analysis-on-a-real-form/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/value-added-analysis-on-a-real-form/Value added analysis on one ordinary approval, step by step. The proportion is not unusual, and the part everyone tries to improve is the smallest number on the page.Fri, 18 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMTCase walkthroughsProcess mappingRosa Delgadohttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/the-stopwatch-gives-you-a-shape/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/the-stopwatch-gives-you-a-shape/Every process model asks how long a step takes, and answering with one number throws away the thing that causes the queue. What to collect instead, and how to read it.Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMTSimulation and what ifVariationTobias Lindqvisthttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/shift-patterns-and-the-overnight-queue/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/shift-patterns-and-the-overnight-queue/Work does not stop arriving when a shift ends, but it does stop being processed. Every gap in the roster is a queue being filled by nobody.Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMTSimulation and what ifSchedulingTobias Lindqvisthttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/five-whys-and-where-it-stops/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/five-whys-and-where-it-stops/Asking why five times works when a chain of single causes led to a single failure. It fails quietly on anything where the cause is a distribution rather than an event.Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMTFundamentalsRoot causeRosa Delgadohttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/capacity-is-not-throughput/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/capacity-is-not-throughput/Capacity is what a process could do. Throughput is what it does. Adding capacity anywhere except the constraint changes the first number and not the second.Wed, 09 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMTFundamentalsConstraintsMarcus Halehttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/rework-and-the-second-pass/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/rework-and-the-second-pass/Ten percent of work coming back does not cost ten percent more. It costs the second pass, the capacity the second pass eats, and the queue that grows behind it.Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMTMetrics and mathsQualityDana Okonkwohttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/reading-a-map-for-waiting/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/reading-a-map-for-waiting/A warranty claim spends sixty four minutes being worked and ninety eight hours waiting. Sorting that waiting into four kinds is what decides which fixes are free.Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMTCase walkthroughsProcess mappingMarcus Halehttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/standard-work-before-automation/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/standard-work-before-automation/Five people, one step, times from six and a half minutes to fourteen. Two of the nine minutes in the business case come out for the price of one printed page.Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMTLean toolsStandard workMarcus Halehttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/averages-hide-the-queue/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/averages-hide-the-queue/Twenty orders, a mean of six days against a six day promise, and five of them over it. The number that would have told you is not the average, and it is not hard to compute.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMTMetrics and mathsVariationDana Okonkwohttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/what-a-bottleneck-costs-an-hour/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/what-a-bottleneck-costs-an-hour/The station costs forty five dollars an hour to run and two thousand nine hundred to stand still. Multiplying by the wrong one is how bottleneck projects get refused.Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMTMetrics and mathsBottlenecksDana Okonkwohttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/batch-size-and-the-queue/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/batch-size-and-the-queue/Ten items, three steps, one minute each. Batched, the first one leaves in twenty one minutes. Unbatched it leaves in three, and the total work is identical.Wed, 26 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMTLean toolsBatchingMarcus Halehttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/utilization-above-eighty/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/utilization-above-eighty/A desk at eighty percent utilization takes five times its own handling time to answer. At ninety it takes ten. The step between them is one extra request an hour.Mon, 24 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMTMetrics and mathsUtilizationDana Okonkwohttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/littles-law/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/littles-law/One claims desk, two honest answers to how long a claim takes. The difference between them is the queue, and the arithmetic that finds it fits on a single line.Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMTMetrics and mathsQueueingDana Okonkwohttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/cycle-time-and-lead-time/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/cycle-time-and-lead-time/A purchase order takes fifty five minutes of work and ten days to arrive. Both figures are right, and the gap between them is the only part worth managing.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMTMetrics and mathsMeasurementDana Okonkwohttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/takt-time/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/takt-time/Takt tells you the beat the customer is setting. It is not a stick to beat a line with, and using it as one is the most common way its real value gets wasted.Fri, 07 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMTLean toolsLine balanceMarcus Halehttps://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/theory-of-constraints/https://processimprovementdaily.com/articles/theory-of-constraints/The five focusing steps are usually read as a list, and step two is the one that gets skipped. On this line it was worth fifteen percent for the price of a break rota.Wed, 05 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMTFundamentalsConstraintsMarcus Hale