The short version- Start from stock, not hopeCount what is physically on your shelves in the units you buy them in. Guessed numbers produce guessed capacity.
- Work per productEach product has its own recipe, so each product has its own ceiling. A shared ingredient links those ceilings together.
- Find the limiting materialDivide the stock of every material by how much one unit needs. The smallest result is your capacity, and that material is your bottleneck.
- Re-check after every orderCapacity is not a monthly report. It changes the moment you accept an order or receive a delivery.
Takeaway. Capacity planning turns a vague feeling of being busy into a number you can quote to a customer with confidence.
A worked example: the Saturday bakery
Say you bake three products and your shelf holds 60 eggs, 8 kg of flour and 1.5 kg of butter. Your chocolate cake needs 4 eggs, 300 g of flour and 120 g of butter per unit. Your brownie tray needs 2 eggs, 150 g of flour and 200 g of butter. Your banana bread needs 2 eggs, 250 g of flour and 80 g of butter.
Divide each material by what one unit needs. For the chocolate cake that gives 15 cakes from eggs, 26 from flour and 12 from butter. The smallest number wins: butter limits you to 12 cakes. For brownies, butter allows only 7 trays. For banana bread, flour allows 32 loaves. Those three numbers, 12, 7 and 32, are your true capacity today, and butter is the bottleneck for two of your three products.
Notice what the bottleneck tells you: buying more flour changes nothing this week, but 500 g more butter adds four cakes and two brownie trays. Capacity planning is really bottleneck planning.
Why the number moves all the time
Capacity is a live figure, not a report you print on Monday. The moment you accept an order for six chocolate cakes, the eggs, flour and butter behind them are spoken for. Your remaining capacity for every other product that shares those materials drops too, because the banana bread was counting on some of the same eggs and flour.
This is the part that defeats mental arithmetic. Two or three products sharing five or six materials create dozens of interactions, and every accepted order reshuffles all of them. Makers who track capacity by feel are usually right about the product in front of them and wrong about the second order that arrives an hour later.
The practical habit is simple: treat every accepted order as an immediate deduction from stock, and re-read the capacity numbers before you promise anything else. If your system does this automatically, you never sell the same butter twice.
Capacity is not just materials
Materials set the theoretical ceiling. Time and equipment often set the real one. If your oven fits eight cakes and bakes them in 40 minutes, a day has a hard cake ceiling no matter how much flour you own. The same applies to curing time for soap, setting time for candles, and chilling time for cheesecakes.
For most small producers the material ceiling is the one that bites first and the one that is easiest to fix, because it responds to a purchase order. Start there. Once materials stop being the constraint, track oven hours or bench hours the same way: total available hours divided by hours per unit.
The makers who quote reliably are the ones who know which of the two ceilings is binding this week and can say so in one sentence.
For information and estimates only. Makeable's formulas, batch limits and margin calculations are mathematical estimates based on your inputs. They are not certified accounting, financial, pricing or tax advice. You are solely responsible for setting your own wholesale and retail prices, ensuring profitability, and checking cost calculations before committing money.
Common questions
How is production capacity different from inventory?
Inventory is what you have. Capacity is what that lets you make. A shelf with 60 eggs and 8 kg of flour is inventory; the knowledge that it supports exactly 12 chocolate cakes is capacity. Inventory software tracks the first, capacity planning answers the second.
How often should I recalculate capacity?
Every time stock moves: when you accept an order, fulfil one, receive a delivery, or write off spoiled material. For a small maker that means several times a day, which is why the calculation belongs in software rather than in a notebook.
What is a bottleneck in small batch production?
The bottleneck is the material that runs out first, the one whose stock divided by per-unit usage gives the lowest number. It is the only purchase that increases capacity, so finding it tells you exactly what to buy next.
