Bryan,

As with Justin, I believe that you have to be very careful utilizing
pricing to modulate capacity (actually I don't think one should do
it). Customers are smart and the business is telling their clients
when they have available capacity. Beyond precedence, this moves the
leverage into the customers hands rather than the business itself.
Also, it is likely to drive/incent other bad behaviors like waiting
for slow periods and buying larger batches...a lose/lose. Lastly, it
is easy for the competiton to match this offer.

I believe a better way to manage this situation is to complete the
buffer management system which has already been started. A buffer
managment system focused on driving the sales activities based on the
loading buffer in front of production. Keep in mind, the measure of
the system should be based on throughput rather than sales which will
not only focus the company on the right products it will help keep
the organization from focusing first on reducing price.

I terms of modulating the system as the buffer gets filled, I believe
it is better to first change lead time over other alternatives
(assuming make-to-order) because it is easy and to implement and
generally doesn't cost a thing.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss further.

Kind regards,

Bill Rhind