“We think we need another shift, line or building — and want to be sure before we spend it.”
Demand is up and the capital request is being drafted. Prove the capacity isn’t already in the building.
What you’re facing
Demand is up — or a big new program is coming — and the plant is already running hard. The conversation has turned to a third shift, a new line, or a building expansion. Someone is drafting the capital request.
Before you commit, a question is nagging you: are we actually out of capacity, or are we out of capacity the way we run today? Those are very different problems, with very different price tags.
What this is costing you
- •Capital tied up in equipment or space you might not need yet
- •A third shift you can’t fully staff, with supervision stretched thin
- •Fixed cost that stays long after the demand spike passes
- •Complexity that makes the existing flow problems worse
The questions you’re probably asking
How much capacity is usually hidden?
It varies widely, and we won’t promise a number before we look. The common sources are changeovers at the constraint, unplanned downtime, speed losses, unbalanced lines, and quality losses consuming constraint time.
Will this delay our expansion decision?
A focused capacity assessment is designed to fit inside the decision window. The result is either capacity recovered or a capital request built on real data — both make the decision stronger.
What if we really do need to expand?
Then you expand with confidence and design the new capacity lean from day one, instead of copying today’s waste into a bigger building.
What to do first
- 1Identify the one or two resources that actually limit output — not the ones that feel busiest.
- 2Break down a week of constraint time: running, changeover, waiting, down, running slow, making scrap.
- 3Compare your line’s cycle times to takt time (available time ÷ customer demand).
- 4Hold the capital request until you have that data in hand.
What best practice says
Capacity is not a building problem until the constraint has been fully exploited. Lean practice is to protect the constraint from starvation, cut its changeovers (SMED), stabilize its uptime, remove quality losses before it, and balance the upstream and downstream work to takt.
Only after those levers are pulled does added capacity make sense — and even then it should be sized to takt and designed for flow.
Method, sized to scope
Capacity recovery before capital: constraint analysis, SMED changeover reduction, line balancing to takt, and quality loss removal at the constraint.
The Exceleor Path, applied to your situation
Every engagement across the Exceleor family follows the same eight stages: Understand, Execute, Sustain. About the Exceleor Path
1. Discovery
In your situation: We measure demand, takt time and true constraint capacity — minute by minute, not from the ERP routing.
2. Define the engagement path
In your situation: We build a capacity bridge: what is recoverable, how fast, with which method, versus what requires capital.
3. Training
In your situation: Your team learns SMED, line balancing and constraint protection hands-on.
4. Implement & engage
In your situation: We run the capacity Kaizens: changeover, balance, downtime and quality at the constraint.
5. Verify
In your situation: We verify recovered output against the takt target.
6. Validate
In your situation: We validate that the output holds at the higher demand level.
7. Transfer ownership
In your situation: You get a capacity model your engineers maintain — the basis for any future capital request.
8. Sustain & grow
In your situation: If expansion is still needed, we help design it lean from the start.
What you’ll have at the end
- A capacity bridge that separates recoverable capacity from true capital need
- Recovered output at the constraint
- A capital request finance can trust — or one you no longer need
- A capacity model your team owns
Why QMSLean
We start from the business symptom, not a favorite tool. The method — A3, Kaizen or DMAIC — is chosen to fit the size of the problem.
We work on the floor and in the office with your people, and we build the sustain system before we leave, so the gain is still there after we are gone.
And when the root of the problem sits outside Lean, the Exceleor family of companies covers quality systems, supplier quality, EHS and leadership.
Tell us what’s going on.
Request a Situation Review. A Lean practitioner will reply by email with how we would approach your version of this problem.