The Life Starter
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Course Library · Lesson 4 of 6
Money · Guided lesson

Find the real capacity limit

About 14 minutes · 4 reading + 10 practice and checks
Time includes reading, practice, and questions. Extra videos or further study are optional.
See this course’s project requirements

A two-product costing and constrained-capacity model with contribution, overhead, bottleneck minutes and a demand-limited production recommendation.

Keep your working files in your own notebook or software. Save a private description, checklist, and work link in My Proof.

What to include

  • A cost-classification and unit-cost schedule.
  • A contribution schedule and two-product profit bridge.
  • An overhead-rate and applied-versus-actual reconciliation.
  • A capacity feasibility and contribution-per-minute table.
  • A checked feasible product mix with an explicit tie and resource ledger.
  • A price/capacity sensitivity and conditional product-mix recommendation.

Review and revise

Use these criteria to check your work and choose what to improve.

  • Costs: behavior, units and overhead assignment are explicit.
  • Feasibility: time/demand/whole-unit constraints hold.
  • Objective: contribution and fixed-pool profit reconcile.
  • Decision: ties and changed-price/capacity scenarios are checked.
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Before you begin

The idea in everyday life

Original fictional practice. All money is USD. No account, payment, personal record or outside participation is required. Fictional workshop sells whole units only. Product A: price 30, variable material 12, variable labor 6, bottleneck 6 min, demand cap 50. Product B: price 24, material 8, labor 4, bottleneck 4 min, demand cap 80. Available bottleneck time 600 min. Monthly fixed manufacturing overhead 600, budget activity 600 min (rate 1/min). All produced units sell within demand limits; no inventory, other constraints or taxes in this bounded model.

The idea

The scarce resource is a common denominator for competing products.

Follow along

Find the real capacity limit — complete worked case

The scarce resource is a common denominator for competing products.

Fictional workshop sells whole units only. Product A: price 30, variable material 12, variable labor 6, bottleneck 6 min, demand cap 50. Product B: price 24, material 8, labor 4, bottleneck 4 min, demand cap 80. Available bottleneck time 600 min. Monthly fixed manufacturing overhead 600, budget activity 600 min (rate 1/min). All produced units sell within demand limits; no inventory, other constraints or taxes in this bounded model.

Two products

Paste at A1.

AProductBPriceCMaterialDVariable laborEMachine minFMax demand
A30126650
B2484480

Copy as plain text
  1. 1. 4.1 Find

    Compute contribution divided by bottleneck minutes for both products.

    You should see: A2/min; B3/min.

  2. 2. 4.2 Find

    Test the proposed maximum-demand mix against 600 minutes.

    You should see: 620 minutes exceeds available time by 20.

  3. 3. 4.3 Find

    Identify B as initial priority while retaining its 80-unit demand cap.

    You should see: Priority is not permission to make 150 B units for sale.

  4. 4. 4.4 Find

    Check a changed A cycle of 3 minutes: A contribution/min 4 now exceeds B3.

    You should see: The prioritization changes with the resource coefficient.

Now change one thing

A new product earns contribution 15 per unit and uses six bottleneck minutes. Enter contribution per scarce minute.

Your work

What to finish

A capacity feasibility and contribution-per-minute table.

Common mistake

Watch for this

Choosing on unit contribution alone or manufacturing units beyond sellable demand.

How can I tell I understand it?

Verify that your completed capacity feasibility and contribution-per-minute table meets the three lesson-specific checks and retains the supporting original records.

Try 3 questions

Quick knowledge check

Answer all 3 questions. Get at least 2 right and the lesson completes automatically.

Not yet passed

You’ll get an explanation for each answer. Signed in? Your results save to your account.

150 A at 6 min and 80 B at 4 min require how many minutes?
2Which metric supports the initial B priority?
3Why cannot the model recommend 150 B units simply from 600/4?
0 of 3 answeredApply the lesson to a short question, then review the explanation.
4
Finish this lesson

Pass the check. We’ll save the progress.

Answer all 3 questions above and get at least 2 right. You can review the explanations and try again.

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Sources and further reading

Explore the references behind this lesson.

Open Stax: Constrained resources
Source & access notes · checked 2026-10-01

Read unit contribution per scarce resource. This course adds its own whole-unit demand limits and exhaustive small-case comparison.

Access: Public primary page body opened and relevant sections read through the web reader on 2026-10-01; no account required for reading.

Reuse: Original Life Starter cases, datasets and questions; no source exercise or worked dataset reproduced. Links support further reading.

Open Stax: Contribution margin
Source & access notes · checked 2026-10-01

Read cost behavior and unit/total contribution formulas. Original two-product case replaces all published examples.

Access: Public primary page body opened and relevant sections read through the web reader on 2026-10-01; no account required for reading.

Reuse: Original Life Starter cases, datasets and questions; no source exercise or worked dataset reproduced. Links support further reading.

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