Capacity Planning

You quote on gut feel, run wide-open, and still fall behind. You're not short on hours — you're short on visibility.

Capacity gets lost in translation between paper and reality. Schedules say 40 hours, but setups, meetings, breakdowns, and chasing prints cut that to 27. Multiply that across machines and you're off by a week before Monday's over.

List every resource — machines, shifts, operators. Use real hours, not theoretical. Find the constraint — what everything waits on. Model it (Airtable, spreadsheet, whiteboard). Simulate what-ifs. Update weekly.

Walk the floor at 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Count how many machines are actually cutting. That's your real utilization.

Form(X) modeled every cell; the laser cell was 132% loaded, router 60%. Rebalancing 10 hrs/week boosted throughput 18%—no new hires.

Capacity isn't math — it's visibility. Once you can see it, you can fix it.