A sporting goods company makes bandanas and flags. It costs $10 to produce one bandana and $12 to produce one flag. It takes 1/4 yard of material for a bandana and 1/2 yard for a flag. What is the constraint in this scenario?

• A. The number of machines
• B. The number of workers
• C. The budget
• D. The amount of material available

Answer: (D)

In production planning, a constraint is the resource that runs out first and limits how much you can produce. Here, the limiting resource is the amount of fabric available. Each bandana uses 1/4 yard and each flag uses 1/2 yard, so the total number of items you can make is bounded by how many yards of material you have. The given costs affect cost, not the available quantity, so they don’t define the constraint. If there were a fixed fabric supply, you’d express it as 1/4 times the number of bandanas plus 1/2 times the number of flags being less than or equal to the total yards available. The other options would only be constraints if there were explicit limits on machines, workers, or budget in the problem.