How to Calculate Factory Production Capacity Before Buying Machinery

Separate theoretical and practical capacity

Theoretical capacity assumes continuous running at rated conditions. Practical capacity subtracts planned breaks, changeovers, maintenance, unplanned stops and speed loss. Saleable capacity further adjusts for quality yield. Always state units per shift, day or month.

Find the constraint

Map each operation from raw material to finished product and calculate output per step. The process with the lowest sustainable good-part throughput is the bottleneck. Purchasing a faster non-bottleneck machine may not increase factory output.

Core calculation

At a single operation, ideal units = available productive minutes ÷ cycle minutes per unit. Then account for actual availability and performance if not already included, and multiply by first-pass yield or final accepted-output yield as appropriate. Avoid deducting the same downtime twice.

Illustrative example

An operation has 420 planned production minutes/shift and a 3-minute ideal cycle: 140 ideal units. If the measured combined availability/performance factor is 80%, processed output is 112; at 95% accepted yield, good output is about 106 units/shift. A downstream station limited to 90 good units becomes the line constraint.

FAQ and capacity-planning checklist

Should the fastest machine set capacity? No, the bottleneck sets line throughput. Does adding overtime always solve shortage? Only if supporting labor, supplies and downstream operations can handle it. Share routing, demand, product mix, shift hours and sample cycle times when discussing equipment options with SAKKARY MACHINERY.