Production Planning for Custom Shops: Find the Bottleneck, Fix the Flow
Every shop owner knows the feeling.
You’ve got work coming in, machines humming, and people moving - but you’re still behind. Something always seems to get in the way of finishing on time.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. And you’re not doing anything wrong.
You just might be missing a core operational concept: capacity planning.
What Is Capacity Planning, Really?
Capacity planning is the process of making sure your resources - machines, people, time—can meet the demand of your production schedule. It’s not about over-optimizing or micro-managing. It’s about seeing the big picture before things go wrong.
It helps you answer questions like:
How much can we actually get done this week?
Are we overbooked?
Where are the bottlenecks?
Do we need to invest in more capacity - or just use what we have more effectively?
Bottlenecks: The Hidden Profit Killer
If you’ve read The Goal by Eli Goldratt, you know the heart of the Theory of Constraints: your system is only as fast as its slowest part.
In a custom shop, that “slowest part” might be:
A single press that gets overloaded
A designer who’s stuck prepping every file
A production manager flying blind with no clear view of machine time
When your bottleneck gets overloaded, your entire workflow backs up. Orders get delayed. Teams get frustrated. Customers get anxious. It’s not about working harder - it’s about working smarter.
How to Start Capacity Planning in a Custom Shop
List your core machines or work centers
Include presses, printers, routers, embroidery machines - anything you schedule work on.Estimate available time per machine per day
Factor in shifts, breaks, maintenance, and downtime.Track how long each job takes
Even rough estimates help. Over time, your data will improve.Compare demand vs. capacity
Are you routinely booking more time than you have? That’s a red flag.Spot the bottlenecks
Which machine is always full? Which station is always waiting? That’s your constraint.Fix the flow
Can you offload work to another machine? Shift the schedule? Change how jobs are routed?
New Tool: Machine Scheduling in shopVOX PRO
To make all this easier, we’ve released a new Machine Scheduling tool inside shopVOX PRO.
It helps you:
See real-time capacity for each machine, each day
Drag and drop unscheduled jobs into open time slots
Split large jobs across multiple days or machines
Prioritize jobs to stay on target
Plan proactively - even with changing workloads
No more guessing. No more overbooking. Just clear, confident scheduling.
Is This Just for Big Shops?
Not at all.
Even if you only have two presses or a couple of printers, knowing how full they are - and where the bottlenecks form - can help you:
Quote more confidently
Reduce overtime and last-minute chaos
Deliver more consistently
Decide when to scale
Capacity Planning = Competitive Advantage
You don’t need to be a Six Sigma expert. You just need visibility, clarity, and a system that helps you stay ahead of problems.
If you're tired of being reactive, and ready to take control of your production flow - capacity planning is your next step.
Book a demo and see how Machine Scheduling in shopVOX PRO makes it possible.