Convert scheduled worker time into a more realistic estimate of usable workshop capacity by accounting for administrative work, productive utilisation and disruption or rework buffer.
Eight scheduled hours are not necessarily eight hours of jewellery production. Staff may spend part of the day on meetings, job preparation, inspection, cleaning, material handling, customer questions, machine setup and other work.
This calculator therefore separates gross scheduled labour from a practical usable estimate. You control the utilisation and buffer assumptions rather than relying on an invented universal workshop percentage.
Two workers with eight-hour shifts have 16 scheduled labour hours. If one hour is allocated to administration, the remaining 15 hours are subject to your productive-utilisation assumption. A further buffer can protect the plan against rework or disruption.
The result is useful for planning, but it is not a guarantee that the workshop will complete a specific number of orders. Skills, equipment, material availability and dependencies can constrain throughput.
Usable hours = (workers × shift hours − admin hours) × utilisation × (1 − buffer). Estimated jobs = usable hours ÷ average labour hours per job.