Growth vs capacity: when to stop selling and start delivering

Some trades fill a year's orders in six weeks. Think of a school-uniform stitcher before term opens, or a sweet maker before Diwali. Each has to decide, while the phone is still ringing, when to stop saying yes. The signal that you are past that point may not be a complaint. It may be that late orders, rework and overtime have become normal and your best people spend their days fixing things. This post gives a small calculator for the decision, using one imagined season. The money side of the same problem is in why your business is growing but profit is not.

Count what the bottleneck can finish

Imagine, as an invented example, a uniform unit in Ulhasnagar that stitches shirts, pinafores and trousers for school contracts. Every garment passes through many hands, but one step limits the rest. Here it is the buttonhole and finishing table, run by three people. The cutting room can do more, and so can the sewing lines.

The first number is what that one step can finish in a day. Time it on an ordinary day, with real pieces, and include the breaks, the thread changes and the rework. In our example the finishing table clears about 150 garments a day. All figures are illustrative.

Do not count machines or workers in total. A business can have forty machines and one finishing table, and the table decides.

Then count what you have already promised

Write each accepted order with its quantity and the date promised. Add up the garments due before a given day and compare them with what the bottleneck can finish by then.

Days left before term:      30
Working days after Sundays: 26
Finishing table, per day:   150
Capacity to term:           26 x 150 = 3,900
Promised so far:            3,400
Room left:                  500  (13 per cent)

The room-left line is the one that answers "may I say yes?" A new order of 800 garments is a no, whatever the margin. An order of 300 is a yes only if nothing else goes wrong, which in a rush is not a safe bet.

A rule with two numbers

Agree this with your supervisor and sales person before the season, not during it.

If room left is under a tenth of capacity, quote only dates after the rush, and say why. Every order accepted below that line is paid for by the orders already in hand. If room left is over a fifth, sell freely. Between them, take only orders that suit you: good payers, simple patterns, no custom colours.

These cut-offs are yours to move. A unit that has missed dates before should be more careful. What matters is that a number exists, so the argument with the person who sells is about the number and not about attitude.

The Ulhasnagar mistake

In the example, the owner had counted machines. The sewing lines could have stitched 5,000 garments to term, so the owner took a school order that put promises at 4,300. The finishing table could clear 3,900.

Three weeks later, 400 garments sat stitched and unfinished at the end of the line, workers did Sunday shifts, and two schools got partial deliveries. Rework rose because tired people finished badly.

What helped was not hiring. The owner moved two sewing operators to the finishing table for the last fortnight. Plain trousers went to a smaller unit the owner had inspected personally. The two latest schools were told the real date. One stayed; the other moved part of its next order to a rival. The room-left calculation went on the office wall for the next season.

Watch for the bottleneck moving

Once you add two people to the finishing table, the limit moves, perhaps to pressing or packing. Time the new weakest step before you trust the old number. A rule built on last season's bottleneck gives confident wrong answers, and the confidence is what makes it dangerous. Write the date you timed each step beside the number. A figure older than the season is a guess, and so is one timed on a day when the best operator was absent.

Who may say no

A rule fails when nobody can apply it. Name one person, usually the production head, who may write "not before this date" on any quotation, and agree that a salesperson cannot overrule it without the owner. Put the delivery date on the quotation itself so that customer and workshop hold the same date.

Expect friction in the first weeks. A salesperson who loses a deal to a longer date will push back. Answer with the late-delivery count from the sheet, not with a speech on attitude.

What stopping selling means

It does not mean closing the shop. It means no new promises the bottleneck cannot keep, no price cuts to win volume, and no campaign that adds enquiries you will quote late. Keep taking enquiries and keep a list of them. When room opens, you will have warm buyers. Tell good customers the real date; an honest one is easier to plan around than a hopeful one.

When this calculation is the wrong tool

If you make to stock, the question is about cash and storage, not hours. If your strain comes from one badly run step and not from volume, a fix at that step costs less than expansion. A quick test: did the same strain appear when you had half the orders? If so, volume is not the cause.

Do the sum before the next yes

Time your bottleneck for a day, add up what you have promised, and write the room-left line where the sales person can see it. Revenue target planning is the service for setting targets your delivery can carry, and your marketing should ease off in a rush season for the same reason. If your order book is full and your team is tired, tell us what you need.