Kamaths Ourtimes Ice Creams: Eliminating the Bottleneck Effect

Kamaths Ourtimes Ice Creams Pvt. Ltd., a company located in Mumbai, India, manufactured and distributed ice cream under the brand Natural Ice Cream. The company specialized in using natural flavours in its products, a fact that helped it carve a niche for itself among health-conscious customers. In April 2017, after witnessing great demand for its ice cream across the country, the company’s board of directors asked the director of operations to draft a plan to expand manufacturing capacity. As his first step towards this expansion, the director wanted to study the current operations and address any inefficiencies. One aspect that caught his attention was the recent delay in product delivery. Based on his experience, he did not see the company’s capacity to fulfill current orders as the reason for delays. Therefore, he decided that the problem was related to the process flow. He would have to find ways to streamline the process to reduce or eliminate all delays in delivery.