ABSTRACT
The Era of Questioning, the period since 1979, has witnessed wide swings in the domestic focus of American politics and politicians, ranging from the last years of Carter through the conservative years of Reagan/Bush, to the modern liberalism of the Clinton White House. The business world has been equally turbulent, with the impact of globalization playing out in the decline of once major industries such as steel and consumer electronics and in the restructuring, reengineering, downsizing, and return to basics in business management. The Dark Ages of capacity reporting, from 1953 to 1978, represented an era when too much was assumed and too little known about the economics of the firm and the impact of global market pressures on company performance. The development of sophisticated simulation models and relational database structures represents the most current operational approach to capacity management. Capacity analysis took on a central role in both the operational and economic literatures after the Dark Ages.
