Zoltán Sebestyén

Managerial perspectives for improving resource utilisation by applying the cost of unused capacity

For production managers, the traditional measures for evaluation resource usage are capacity utilisation and efficiency. These measures concentrate on the amount of resources used, and ignore the value of resources left idle. The concept of the cost of unused capacity developed in conjunction with activity-based costing by Cooper and Kaplan makes it possible to present information for managers about the value of idle resources as well. In this article, a continuous flow operation and a part manufacturing operation are used to illustrate the application of the cost of unused capacity in production and capacity planning-related decisions.