The worldwide economic reorganisation of the last decade has regularly been accompanied by appeals to
concepts of lean manufacturing and flexible systems. These generally imply a scaling of productive and
operating capacity to match demand and current throughput levels. The issue of how to manage scarce
capacity has risen in priority both because of a constant search for greater efficiency and because of
imbalances between the supply and demand of many resources. Multiple constraints have emerged
throughout the Irish economy for individual firms, and for entire sectors. Firms in the internationally traded
sector operate within the constraints of globalised lean production models. Those in the non-traded sectors
face novel problems related to the shortage of staff and other resources, where slack and under-utilisation
might previously have presented the primary resource issues.