An Insider's Guide to Capacity Planning

Every good factory manager knows that there is a lot more to increasing the capacity of a manufacturing facility than just throwing in a new production line. Capacity planning is one of the most important aspects of a floor manager’s job; it can mean the difference between turning record profits or losing top customers due to late delivery. The keys to successful capacity planning are: careful data analysis, effective integration, and frequent review of the new addition of demand.

The decision to increase your facility’s capacity is one that should be undertaken very carefully. While no one would expect to throw down a new production line and expect it to work out, analyzing the problem too long can lead to costly delays. Ideally, you’ll be able to analyze your past, current, and projected orders, and come up with a reasonable estimate of what will need to be produced. Of course, every manager knows that this can be an incredibly time-consuming and expensive process. That’s why so many facilities have turned to constraint-based capacity planning software to analyze their past data and make predictions about their current and future orders and output. Advanced planning and scheduling software that has a “what-if” feature is particularly useful, since it can allow a manager to run several different scenarios. Essentially, this can allow a manager to virtually try out a new production system before making any capital investment or installing equipment on the factory floor.

Once new equipment is chosen, it’s important to have a well-worked out plan for construction and integration. Installation means down time for other lines as equipment is moved into place and big changes for employee schedules. If installation is being done by in-house maintenance crews, it’s probable that changes to the maintenance schedule could last for weeks. While many managers simply try to minimize the effect that the new installation will have on other areas of the factory, experienced managers know that the best strategy is to plan carefully to work around the disruptions. This means making changes to the maintenance schedule in anticipation of the install and alerting line workers to the changes that they can expect. Scheduling software is a good way to predict these issues and come up with the most efficient schedules for both employees and the existing production lines to make sure that installation eats into productivity and disrupts delivery as little as possible.

Finally, it’s critical to realize that capacity planning doesn’t stop after the new line becomes fully operational. While every manager knows that it can take a while before a new piece of equipment is operating at full capacity, the truth is that it often takes months for a new production line to become fully integrated into the factory. For example, while most managers assume that training the first batch of workers will take time, few of them realize that this first group will be slower to train their replacements. This can cause slowdowns for up to a year as normal worker turn over occurs. Maintenance will take longer to clean and make repairs for a while until they are used to the new system and operators will be learning over time too. The solution is to keep track of employee and line progress with a software program that can track everyone’s productivity on the new equipment.