Operations plans examples: five limits to look for

An operations plan is a description of the one thing that stops the business doing more. Find that thing and the section writes itself. Miss it and the section fills with activity that never touches capacity.

Below are five operations plans examples, by name. For each one the limit is named, the wording its operations section turns on is shown, and the cost the first draft forgets is spelled out.

What to take away

Why these five, and what each one is

Each business below is real and named. The three franchise chains set their operations out in franchise disclosure documents — the filing the FTC Franchise Rule requires a franchisor to give a prospective franchisee, and to file with state examiners where the state requires it. The other two are not franchisors; their limits show in how the work is sold and delivered. In each case the limit is the one the model turns on, and the paragraphs that follow show how to check it.

Precision Tune Auto Care: the bay is the limit

A Precision Tune shop sells service hours out of a fixed number of bays. An operations section for that model is built around bay count, technician count and hours open, because those three numbers set the ceiling on revenue. A prospective owner meets those requirements in the franchise disclosure document before signing anything.

Example wording the section can use: "Revenue is capped by the bays we operate and the technician hours we put into them, so we count jobs per bay per day after setup, lift and cleanup." The fields to fill are the bay count, the technicians on shift by day, the hours open, jobs per bay per day, and the minutes a changeover takes.

The reasoning: a bay that is empty earns nothing, and a bay with a car in it earns only if a technician is free. So the plan states jobs per bay per day, not jobs per shop per day.

Setup, lift time and cleanup sit between jobs and are counted, not waved away. A shop quoting its physical maximum has skipped the only interesting question, and the projections built on that number will exceed what the shop can do.

The cost the first draft forgets is the changeover: the twenty minutes between one car off the lift and the next one on.

Sport Clips: the licensed stylist is the limit

Sport Clips franchises sell haircuts, and a haircut needs a licensed stylist in the chair. The limit is people, not space. The license is a state cosmetology or barbering license, held by the individual rather than by the shop.

The operations section in a Sport Clips plan has to say who holds the license, what only they can do, and what happens in the month one leaves: who else can legally take the chair, how long hiring and training a licensed replacement takes, and whether the shop can trade at all in the meantime.

Three paragraphs earn their place: what is documented so somebody else could follow it, what is cross-trained and to whom, and what is insured or contracted for.

Example wording the section can use: "Only a stylist holding a current state cosmetology or barbering license takes the chair, so chair coverage is set by which license holders are scheduled." The fields to fill are who holds the license, how many chairs each holder covers, how long a licensed replacement takes to hire and train, and whether the shop trades at all while a chair is unfilled.

Rather than writing that the shop is insured, name the covers: general liability, property, and workers' compensation, which nearly every state requires once there are employees. Check which covers a business of this shape usually carries.

Where the stylist holds the license the shop trades under, say whether the shop can operate at all without them. Make the roles agree with the team section, because a capacity number that assumes a stylist who is not on the roster is fiction.

Two Men and a Truck: the route is the limit

Two Men and a Truck sells moving crews and trucks by the hour. Capacity is moves per day, and moves per day is decided by drive time, not by loading time.

The operations section has to write the geography: the service radius, how dense customers are inside it, and how long the average trip between two jobs takes, that last item being the number that decides moves per day.

Example wording the section can use: "We sell crew and truck hours, and the day is planned around drive time, so moves per day is set by the service radius and the average trip between two jobs rather than by how fast a crew loads." The fields to fill are the service radius, customer density inside it, average trip time between jobs, crew hours per move, and vehicle downtime.

Then it shows the day as a sequence with travel included. A plan that counts only billable loading minutes will overstate capacity by a wide margin, and the error compounds through the whole forecast.

Vehicle downtime belongs here as a cost and as a capacity event. The safety obligations that come with trucks, loading and lifting sit with OSHA, the federal workplace safety authority, and are worth reading in its guidance rather than assumed.

Blue Bottle Coffee: the input lead time is the limit

Blue Bottle roasts green coffee that has to be bought, shipped and landed before it can be sold. The limit is the lead time on an input, and the operations section is largely a working capital section.

The reasoning: green coffee is bought months ahead, sits in a warehouse, and only becomes revenue after roasting and sale. So the plan states the lead time, the minimum order, the payment terms and whether a second source exists.

Example wording the section can use: "Green coffee is bought months ahead and becomes revenue only once it is landed, roasted and sold, so this section is a working capital section." The fields to fill are the lead time from order to landed stock, the minimum order, the payment terms, whether a second source exists, and how much stock has to be held to keep roasting.

Then it states what has to be held to trade, how long it sits, and what happens if it does not sell.

The number to carry forward is the cash tied up at the busiest point of the year. That is a different figure from cost of goods sold, and it is the one that decides the funding requirement.

Geek Squad: the queue is the limit

Geek Squad takes devices into a repair bench and returns them. The limit is how many units one technician can close in a shift.

The operations section has to state the promise: how quickly a device is turned around, and what happens when the queue exceeds that promise. Write the escalation path, name who covers out of hours, and say what the business does when demand passes the promise rather than discovering it in the week it happens.

Example wording the section can use: "The bench closes a set number of units per technician per shift, and the turnaround promise holds only while the queue stays under it." The fields to fill are units per technician per shift, the turnaround promise itself, the backlog at which the promise breaks, who covers out of hours, and the escalation path.

The comparison against the offer described in the product and service section usually exposes the mismatch fastest, because the unit of sale in one has to be the unit of capacity in the other.

What the finished section must contain either way is set out in the guide to putting a real process behind operations plans, which takes the section from the unit of sale to the numbers the model needs.

How to read your own draft against these

Three questions will tell you more than reading it front to back. Which of the five limits is this? Does the section name that limit in the first half page? And is the number in the forecast smaller than the limit in every month?

Apply the same three to a competitor's plan if you can get one. Published sample plans are tidied for teaching and rarely show the exceptions, which is the part you most need to see.

Common questions

Three questions come up most often once a limit has been named. Each one is about what to do when a second limit appears, or when the named one moves.

My business has two limits at once. Which do I write about?

Both, in the order they bind. Usually one binds now and the other binds after the first is relieved. Saying which is which is more useful than choosing one.

Does the limit change as the business grows?

Yes, and that is worth a sentence. The owner's hours limit almost every business at the start, and something else takes over later. A plan that names the handover reads as one written by somebody who has thought a year ahead.

Where do I find more real examples to compare against?

Franchise disclosure documents are the richest public source, because they must describe operations in detail. Operators in your trade who are not competitors, and advisers who see plans from your industry, are the other route.

Is a section shorter than a page ever enough?

If it names the limit, the throughput, the timing and the response when the limit binds, yes. Length is not the measure. Missing any of those four is.