Interactive · Find the bottleneck

The hike finishes with the last person.

One trail, four hikers, and no passing. The slowest hiker limits everyone behind them. Compare a faster leader, a group paced to Herbie, and a lighter pack for Herbie. The last hiker determines how much trail the whole group has completed.

TrailheadCamp · 6 mi

The fourth hiker cannot pass Herbie. The group finishes when the last person reaches camp.

0 h · trailhead4.00 h · camp
Trail completed by the whole group
Solid · behind the last hikerHatched · gap to the leader
Throughput ↑Rate of completed work
Inventory ↓Work started, not finished
Operating expense ↓What it takes to run the operation
Raise throughput while reducing inventory and operating expense. Judge the whole system.
Throughput · last hiker’s current pace
Inventory proxy · front-to-back gap
Operating expense proxy · committed time
Six-mile teaching adaptation inspired by The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox. Invented speeds; no passing. Hiker-hours are a time proxy for operating expense and include waiting until everyone arrives. Each hiker has a separate vertical stem to the same trail. Small visual spacing keeps followers behind the person ahead; it adds no distance, buffer, or time to the calculation. The triangle shows the direction of improvement; the readings show this point in the hike.