Delivery Ops
Part of Startup customer delivery operations
Identifying capacity limits before accepting more customers
Check a proposed customer's scope and dates against existing delivery promises, bottlenecks and confirmed resources before accepting the work.
Before accepting another customer, test the proposed scope and dates against work already promised at the step most likely to run out of room. Decide whether you can serve this customer as offered. If the answer depends on unconfirmed staff time, stock or a supplier date, mark that capacity as uncertain and revise the offer before making a firm promise.
Check the route and find the constraint
List the proposed customer's required stages and when each must happen. Include preparation, production or service time, specialist review, customer input and final delivery as relevant. Compare those dates with accepted customer work, internal obligations using the same resource, planned absences and known downtime.
The limit may be a person, facility, material, supplier or fixed appointment window. A team with spare general hours can still be full if every job needs the same specialist on the same day. A crowded task list alone does not prove a particular date is impossible. Identify the contested resource and when it is needed.
Use units that fit the work: hours of a specific skill, production slots, available stock or review appointments. Do not add unlike units into one total. Where estimates are rough, label them and consider what happens if a task takes longer or an input arrives late.
Put the proposed job beside confirmed work
| Check | Record for the proposed customer |
|---|---|
| Existing promises | Which accepted jobs use the same scarce resource before the proposed due date? |
| Usable capacity | What time, stock or slots are confirmed after those jobs and known absences? |
| New demand | What does this scope require, and when? |
| Dependency | Which customer input, approval or supplier delivery is still uncertain? |
| Decision | Can the offered date stand, or must scope or timing change? |
Keep enquiries and likely sales visible for planning, but do not count them as confirmed delivery commitments. Do not count hoped-for overtime, a possible hire or an unconfirmed supplier shipment as usable capacity for a firm offer.
Make the acceptance decision explicit
If the required stages fit and the team has accounted for material uncertainty, an authorised person can confirm the proposed scope and date. If a bottleneck does not fit, choose a response the business can support: offer a later start, agree a smaller initial scope, secure dependable extra capacity or decline the request.
Check that the choice would not displace an existing customer promise. Record the offered terms, decision owner and assumption that needs another check.
Suppose a prospective service customer asks for an implementation in a week when the only qualified reviewer is committed to accepted work. The team could offer the next confirmed review slot or agree a useful narrower first stage that does not need that review. Open time elsewhere on the team does not support the original finish date.
The ACCC says it can investigate reports where a business breaks rules about accepting payment without intending to supply, and can require businesses to back up claims about their products or services. Before confirming, check that claims in the offer are supported by the capacity and dependency information recorded above.
Recheck when the premise changes
A newly accepted job changes the remaining capacity. A delay in customer input or supplier delivery may change it later.
Update the admission view when those facts change and tell sales and delivery which dates can currently be offered. If an existing promise becomes doubtful, assign someone to update that customer as well as reconsidering future offers.
