How do you calculate a foundry bottleneck score?

Multiply the severity score by the occurrence score by the detection score. With ratings of 8, 6, and 4, the product is 192 on a raw scale, shown here as a scaled 6.3 risk figure; rank every bottleneck the same way and attack the highest first.

What is severity vs occurrence vs detection?

Severity is how badly the bottleneck hurts output or quality when it bites. Occurrence is how frequently it actually constrains the line. Detection is how hard it is to catch before it stops flow — a higher detection score means harder to see, which raises risk.

What is a good bottleneck score?

Lower is better. There's no universal threshold because it depends on your scoring scale, but rank-order your constraints and draw the action line wherever your improvement capacity runs out. The highest scores get worked first.

Why multiply instead of add the three scores?

Multiplication makes a constraint that's bad on all three axes dominate one that's bad on only one. A severe, frequent, invisible bottleneck is genuinely the most dangerous, and multiplying surfaces it; adding would flatten that signal.

Can I compare scores across different foundries?

Only if both use the identical scoring scale and anchor definitions. Scores are meaningful for ranking within one consistent rubric; across sites with different scales they aren't comparable.

How do I lower a high detection score?

Add monitoring that surfaces the constraint earlier — sensors on melt temperature, mold counts, or queue depth — so the bottleneck stops being invisible. Better detection lowers that score and the overall risk number even before you fix the root cause.

Foundry & Forging calculator

Foundry Bottleneck Score Calculator

The Foundry Bottleneck Score is an FMEA-style risk priority number adapted for foundry flow constraints, combining how bad a bottleneck's impact is (severity), how often it chokes the line (occurrence), and how hard it is to see coming (detection). Casting plant managers and continuous-improvement engineers use it to rank competing problems — a melt-deck delay, a shakeout queue, a core-room shortage — so limited improvement effort goes where it pays. Multiplying three scores instead of averaging them is deliberate: a constraint that is severe, frequent, and invisible scores far higher than one that's merely bad on one axis. It converts shop-floor arguments about "what hurts most" into a comparable number.

What this calculator does

Rank foundry bottlenecks using severity, occurrence, and detection scores.
Use it when comparing constraints such as furnace capacity, core shortages, mold line delays, shakeout, cleaning, inspection, tooling, or labor.
It multiplies a severity, occurrence, and detection rating into a single risk priority number that ranks foundry bottlenecks against each other.

Formula used

Foundry Bottleneck Score risk score = bottleneck severity score × bottleneck occurrence score × bottleneck detection score
Use the same scoring scale across comparable bottleneck risks.

Inputs explained

Bottleneck severity score:
Bottleneck occurrence score:
Bottleneck detection score:

How to use the result

Use it when prioritizing which constraint to attack first across the melt, mold, pour, shakeout, and finishing stages.
The multiplicative scale is ordinal, not linear — a score of 192 is not literally twice as urgent as 96, so use it to rank, not to do arithmetic on.

Current U.S. benchmarks

The producer price index for steel mill products stands at 348.53 (BLS, May 2026), up 6.7% from a year earlier. Quotes priced off last quarter's material cost miss this move.
The U.S. has 3,569 primary metal manufacturing establishments employing about 354,911 workers (Census County Business Patterns, 2023).

Common questions

How do you calculate a foundry bottleneck score? Multiply the severity score by the occurrence score by the detection score. With ratings of 8, 6, and 4, the product is 192 on a raw scale, shown here as a scaled 6.3 risk figure; rank every bottleneck the same way and attack the highest first.
What is severity vs occurrence vs detection? Severity is how badly the bottleneck hurts output or quality when it bites. Occurrence is how frequently it actually constrains the line. Detection is how hard it is to catch before it stops flow — a higher detection score means harder to see, which raises risk.
What is a good bottleneck score? Lower is better. There's no universal threshold because it depends on your scoring scale, but rank-order your constraints and draw the action line wherever your improvement capacity runs out. The highest scores get worked first.
Why multiply instead of add the three scores? Multiplication makes a constraint that's bad on all three axes dominate one that's bad on only one. A severe, frequent, invisible bottleneck is genuinely the most dangerous, and multiplying surfaces it; adding would flatten that signal.
Can I compare scores across different foundries? Only if both use the identical scoring scale and anchor definitions. Scores are meaningful for ranking within one consistent rubric; across sites with different scales they aren't comparable.

Last reviewed 2026-05-12.