Filters and Bottlenecks

Filters operate at multiple stages in a continuous series of process steps. An atmosphere of doubt creates filters across many opportunity selection steps. Filters are self-imposed or, more likely, emerge from many poor guesses about what happens next. The filters are constructed from past failures and result from a yearning not to repeat highly visible future failures.

Bottlenecks occur when some work product arrives at a stage where only a fixed number of activities are allowed. Wafer starts in a factory are a type of bottleneck. Every other stage could have filters (incremental yield depressed by defects per unit area too high) but having escaped at each of these stages the final bottleneck depends on the entire factory load and not on one particular lot. No matter how many brilliant discoveries in physics each year, only one Nobel in physics is awarded. Don't show up when the bus is full.

[ed. the last natural ginger post. now a member of the team B3asT]