This page is for anyone who has to answer a buyer's question: can this factory take on our order, and by when. A factory's capacity is not an opinion; it is a fixed amount of people, machines and hours in a given period, and most of it is usually already promised to orders confirmed earlier. A person who quotes a delivery date without checking what is already committed is guessing, not planning.
This matters most to a merchandiser at a factory, since a buyer will hold the factory to whatever date the merchandiser confirms. Delta Garments, a garment factory with 600 sewing operators, is used throughout this lesson because it is one factory everyone can picture, already running Order A, a 15,000-piece order with its own fixed 2-week sewing window, when a second enquiry arrives.
Without this knowledge, a merchandiser answers a scheduling question by thinking only about how fast the factory could theoretically make the goods, and forgets to check how much of that same capacity is already spoken for. This lesson gives you the method for checking committed capacity before any date is confirmed.
You need: nothing but this page. You do not need to have planned a factory's production schedule before.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: the departments inside a garment factory (lesson 7.1.1), how a factory finds a bottleneck once an order is already running (lesson 7.1.4), and pre-negotiated seasonal capacity itself (lesson 1.4.2).
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Capacity | The maximum quantity a factory, a line or a department can produce in a given time, given its current people, machines and hours. |
| Capacity planning | Working out how much of a factory's available capacity a new order would use, before deciding whether to accept it and by when it can ship. |
| Capacity utilisation | The share of a factory's available capacity actually being used by confirmed orders, expressed as a percentage of its maximum output. |
| Pre-negotiated capacity | Factory production capacity a buyer reserves ahead of a season, before a specific order is confirmed. |
| Make to Order (MTO) | Production starts only after a specific buyer has confirmed a specific order, with quantity, price and delivery date agreed. |
| Make to Stock (MTS) | Producing against the seller's own sales forecast, rather than a single confirmed buyer order. |
A factory's capacity is the maximum quantity it can produce in a given period with its current people, machines and hours. Before accepting a new order, a factory must check how much of that capacity is already committed to existing orders. An order accepted beyond remaining capacity cannot actually be delivered on time, however firmly it is promised, because the people, machines and hours it needs are already doing other confirmed work.
A person who has only checked capacity for one kind of order should not assume every capacity question looks the same. The shape of the check changes, but the underlying rule does not.
| What can differ | The shapes you meet | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| A single large order's own shape | One order of 15,000 pieces can occupy a large share of a line's capacity for its own sewing window, leaving little room for another order on the same line at the same time. | A single big order can commit a whole line by itself, not just a fraction of it. |
| Several smaller orders running together | A factory may run multiple smaller orders on different lines, or in sequence on the same line, each using a share of total capacity. | The shares must be added up together, not checked one order at a time, or the total commitment is understated. |
| Export versus domestic capacity commitment | An export buyer like Northline Apparel may agree pre-negotiated capacity ahead of a season; a domestic Make to Stock buyer like Cedar & Co. instead places orders against whatever capacity the factory reports as free at the time. | Changes whether a slot was already reserved months ago or is being checked fresh today. |
| Overtime as extra, costed capacity | A factory can extend its own capacity temporarily with overtime, at Order A's own fixed cost of USD 0.15 per piece. | Overtime adds capacity at an added cost; it is never the same thing as base capacity that costs nothing extra to use. |
Delta Garments has 600 sewing operators across the whole factory. Order A, Northline Apparel's 15,000-piece order, is already running on part of that capacity, with its own fixed 2-week sewing window. Before Order A's sewing window ends, Layla at Cedar & Co., a domestic Make to Stock brand also produced at Delta Garments, checks whether the factory can start Cedar & Co.'s own next production run, the same size as Order A, in that same 2-week window, so the domestic brand's own shelves are restocked on schedule.
| Fact | What it tells Delta Garments |
|---|---|
| 600 sewing operators, factory-wide | A total headcount figure, not proof that any specific line is free right now |
| Order A's own fixed 2-week sewing window | Already committing part of that headcount for those exact two weeks |
| The new enquiry's requested window | The same 2-week window Order A is already using |
| What Mona has checked so far | Nothing yet — she has not compared the new order's requirement against what remains free |
Delta Garments' total headcount is a real number, but it describes the whole factory, not the specific line or operators the new order would actually use.
The worked numberThis example is illustrative, not a claimed fixed academy fact: no single committed-hours figure for Delta Garments' sewing line is fixed in the master cast. What is fixed is Order A's own 2-week sewing window and its own overtime rate. If that window is fully committed to Order A, a second, similar order sharing it needs either idle capacity elsewhere in the factory or costed overtime. Order A's own fixed overtime rate gives a sense of scale for what extending capacity, rather than assuming it is free, would cost for one order this size.
Overtime cost, in USD, for producing Order A's own 15,000 pieces on overtime instead of within base capacity.
A common mistake is treating "we could make 15,000 pieces in 2 weeks" as proof that a new 15,000-piece order can also ship in 2 weeks, without first checking how much of that same capacity and time window is already committed to other confirmed orders. The same sewing line may already be fully committed to Order A for that exact window, which the theoretical production speed says nothing about. Quoting a date this way promises a delivery the factory may not actually be able to keep.
A factory's capacity is the most it can produce in a given time with the people, machines and hours it has right now. Before saying yes to a new order, a factory has to check how much of that capacity is already promised to other confirmed orders, and for which weeks. A big total headcount for the whole factory does not prove one specific line is free. If the new order does not fit the time left, the factory can offer a later date, pay for extra hours, or turn the order down. Promising a date based only on how fast the work could theoretically be done, without checking what is already committed, risks a promise the factory cannot keep.
Layla, the merchandiser at Cedar & Co. (a domestic Make to Stock brand also produced at Delta Garments), asks Mona, the merchandiser at Delta Garments, whether the factory can start and finish Cedar & Co.'s own next production run in the same 2-week sewing window that Order A is currently using, because Cedar & Co. wants its own shelves restocked on schedule.
Layla's message reads:
Should Mona confirm to Layla that Cedar & Co.'s new run can be finished in the same 2-week window as Order A, without first checking committed capacity.
No. Mona cannot honestly confirm a production window until she has checked how much of the factory's relevant capacity is already committed to Order A and any other confirmed work in that same period.
First, Order A's own fixed 2-week sewing window. That window is already occupying part of the factory's sewing capacity right now, on a specific line, for two named weeks. A new, similar order asking for the same weeks is asking for a share of that same, already-committed resource.
Second, what the 600 sewing operators actually prove. Delta Garments' total headcount of 600 is a factory-wide figure, not proof that a specific line is free. Mona has not yet checked how many of those operators are already assigned to Order A versus other confirmed work, so the number cannot answer Layla's question by itself.
Mona should check remaining capacity, line by line, before quoting any date to Layla. Confirming first and checking afterward risks promising a production window the factory cannot actually meet.
If Mona promises the new order for the same 2-week window without checking, and the factory later discovers the line is already fully committed to Order A, Delta Garments faces one of two costs. It can pay for overtime capacity: Order A's own fixed overtime cost of USD 0.15 per piece gives a sense of scale, since 15,000 pieces × USD 0.15 comes to USD 2,250 just for one order's worth of overtime.
Or it can miss the promised date, which damages the relationship with Cedar & Co. Both costs are ones a capacity check before quoting a date would have avoided. Against Order A's own FOB price of USD 3.20 per piece, used here only as a benchmark for scale, USD 2,250 in unplanned overtime for a similar-sized run is a real, avoidable share of an order's margin, not a small rounding cost.
Open the Factory workflow and capacity worksheet. For the sewing line row, compare the target output column against the actual output column for Order A's own committed window. Where actual output already fills the target for the weeks a new order would need, that line has no spare capacity left for those weeks; where a gap remains between target and actual, that gap is the spare capacity a new order could actually use. Fill in the actual output and notes columns for your own order before quoting any delivery date, and leave the bottleneck column for lesson 7.1.4.
Download the Factory workflow and capacity worksheet (Excel)
1. What does a factory's capacity mean in this lesson's rule?
2. Why can a factory not simply quote a new delivery date based on how fast it could theoretically produce an order?
3. A factory with two sewing lines has Line 1 fully committed to an existing order for the next 3 weeks, and Line 2 completely free. A new order needing 3 weeks of sewing capacity is enquired about. Can the factory accept it using Line 2?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capacity | الطاقة الإنتاجية | Capacité | Kapasite | The maximum quantity a factory, a line or a department can produce in a given time, given its current people, machines and hours. |
| Capacity planning | تخطيط الطاقة الإنتاجية | Planification de capacité | Kapasite planlama | Working out how much of a factory's available capacity a new order would use, before deciding whether to accept it and by when it can ship. |
| Capacity utilisation | معدل استغلال الطاقة الإنتاجية | Taux d'utilisation de la capacité | Kapasite kullanım oranı | The share of a factory's available capacity actually being used by confirmed orders, expressed as a percentage of its maximum output. |
| Pre-negotiated capacity | طاقة إنتاجية محجوزة مسبقًا | Capacité pré-négociée | Önceden ayrılmış kapasite | Factory production capacity a buyer reserves ahead of a season, before a specific order is confirmed. |
| Make to Order (MTO) | الإنتاج حسب الطلب | Fabrication sur commande (MTO) | Siparişe göre üretim (MTO) | Production starts only after a specific buyer has confirmed a specific order, with quantity, price and delivery date agreed. |
| Make to Stock (MTS) | إنتاج حسب المخزون | Fabrication sur stock | Stoğa üretim | Producing against the seller's own sales forecast, rather than a single confirmed buyer order. |
You now know how to check whether a new order fits inside a factory's remaining capacity. The next lesson turns to a different question: once an order is already running, how a factory finds the one stage that is slowing every stage after it. Back to the course map