Signal Lab

Manufacturing Throughput Ranker

A bottleneck-aware product mix ranker (Theory of Constraints style).
It measures throughput per bottleneck minute — not fully absorbed unit cost.
Use it to prioritise the mix that earns the most contribution on the scarce resource.

Industry — Manufacturing Profitability What-ifs

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Rank the mix by throughput per bottleneck minute — not fully absorbed unit cost.

Sample figures: AU manufacturing.

Price, TVC (truly variable cost), bottleneck minutes

TVC (truly variable cost) is materials (and other truly variable $) — not absorbed overhead. Persist locally · Jump to rank

Throughput, not absorption

Absorption costing can make a slow SKU look profitable while it starves the constraint. Here Throughput = Price − TVC (truly variable cost), then Throughput / bottleneck minute ranks the mix. Overhead stays off the rank.

Product Selling price TVC (truly variable cost) Bottleneck minutes Throughput Throughput / bottleneck minute Rank

OEE = A × P × Q — a secondary bridge to good units, not a replacement for the rank.

Ranked mix by constraint minute

Highest Throughput / bottleneck minute should eat the constraint first — unless a commercial override exists.

Ranked list

How this is calculated
  • Throughput = Selling price − Truly variable cost (materials)
  • Throughput / bottleneck minute = Throughput ÷ Bottleneck minutes
  • Rank by Throughput / bottleneck minute descending
  • OEE (optional) = Availability × Performance × Quality

Contrast: absorption / fully loaded unit cost can invert the mix. Illustrative — not advice.

Sensitivity dials

Price, TVC (truly variable cost), and bottleneck minutes — base table below; adjusted rank in the what-if cards.

What-if dials

Each dial stacks on every product.

Scales selling price on every SKU.

Scales truly variable cost (materials).

Scales bottleneck minutes (process time).

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