From the course: Excel: Business Process Analysis
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Calculate process characteristics using Little’s Law
From the course: Excel: Business Process Analysis
Calculate process characteristics using Little’s Law
- [Instructor] When you analyze a process, you usually want to know three things: the average number of units in the process, the average flow rate, and the average flow time. In this movie, I will describe Little's Law, which shows how those three quantities are related, and show you how to find one value if you know the other two. I'll start in PowerPoint with an overview of Little's Law. John Little, who was a professor at MIT, discovered the relationship that I just described. If you have a manufacturing or service process, which is a subset of queueing theory, then, as I said, the average number of units in the process equals the average flow rate time the average flow time. To define terms, average units in the process is production items or customers being served. So if you're at a coffee shop and you see five people who are in the process of getting their order or are in line to get their order, then that is the average number of humans. Average flow rate is the number of…
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