Business Case Studies & Business Publications

Matching Capacity and Demand

Chao, Raul O., Gol...

Technical Note

Matching Capacity and Demand

Chao, Raul O.; Goldberg, Rebecca

OM-1651 | Published September 4, 2025 | 1 Pages Technical Note

Collection: Darden School of Business

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Product Details

This technical note is part of a set that focuses on basic techniques for matching capacity and demand, including shifting resources and reducing cycle time by changing the work content of the tasks. While designed to be used together, these two notes can also be used as stand-alone documents to support particular learning objectives. The other note in this set is “Matching Capacity and Demand: Load Balancing” (UVA-OM-1652). These materials form one module in our collection of introductory operations management topics, and all are appropriate for an advanced undergraduate- or graduate-level introductory course on operations management. The complete list of the materials in this collection is available in the teaching materials included with this technical note.

1. Explore the relationship between capacity and demand, and how it can be influenced by increasing available time or reducing cycle time. 2. Show how shifting resources to the bottleneck can affect the available time, capacity, and utilization. 3. Present the considerations for reducing cycle time by shifting work content away from the bottleneck, as well as the related effects on capacity and utilization.