Steps, tools, or workers in an operational process that have excess capacity and must wait on or adapt their pace to match the single slowest step (the bottleneck).

Borrowed directly from Eliyahu Goldratt's Theory of Constraints manufacturing literature. It bestows heavy industrial factory management prestige on telling employees not to over-produce work that will sit in a queue waiting for legal review.

• Theory of Constraints Posture: Draping operational pacing in heavy manufacturing management theory.
• Consulting Jargon: Using complex industrial terms to explain why faster steps shouldn't flood slow steps with backlogged work.
• Kitchen Reality Check: Like telling the prep cook to stop chopping onions because the line cook is stuck on steaks.

The Goal / Manufacturing Drama classic factory scene where the plant manager stands on the assembly floor, staring at a single clogged stamping machine while upstream workers sit idle.

Steps in a process that are faster than the main bottleneck and must pace their output to match the slowest step.

“Aligning subordinate non-bottlenecks eliminated backlog build-up in document processing.”

“We asked our drafting team to slow down document output so they don't overwhelm our legal review team, which is the slowest step.”