Capacity Requirements Planning

Virtually every company has to deal with limited capacity. The infinite Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP) module shows the planner how well the existing capacity of the shop meets the anticipated load. It enables the user to merge shop orders, firm planned orders and computer planned orders in from their packages of origin (Shop Floor Control, Master Scheduling and/or Material Requirements Planning).

Powerful Visual Resource Planner

Progression's Capacity Requirements Planning uses a visual interface that allows you to view and change the schedule for any shop order. It provides the capability to graphically display the load in each work center, highlighting the shop orders that have insufficient machine or labor hour capacity.

Shop order detail, work center capacity, and work center load graphs are easily accessible through menu options or push buttons. Using the intuitive visual interface, shop orders scheduled for an operation on a given day can be moved to a different day or operation by dragging and dropping the shop order. The visual interface provides sufficient warnings when due dates are being impacted, or operations are moved out of sequence.

Any schedule changes are saved to What-If files for later analysis. Once the desired schedule changes are made, then a process update feature will update the Progression Databases with the transactions from the selected What-If file.

“What-If” Anaysis

Capacity Requirements Planning stores these orders in a separate Simulated Load file, so that the user may alter them without affecting the original orders. Along these same lines, CRP also provides the ability to add, modify and delete firm planned orders and to convert computer planned orders into firm planned orders. It also provides visual tools that enable the planner to adjust the schedule so that it better accommodates capacity.

Once orders have been merged into the Simulated Load file they can be modified to accomplish rescheduling. The user may change the scheduling method for an order as well as its start and due dates to investigate alternative solutions to the problem of inadequate capacity. Changes to the start date of a non-dependent shop order can have repercussions if the order requires components that are produced by other shop orders. CRP is able to reschedule dependent shop orders based upon changes made to the start date of the highest-level (non-dependent) order. Such rescheduling helps to ensure that components will be ready when they are needed.

Once a schedule with an acceptable load profile has been established, the scheduling information can be posted back to the packages from which the orders were copied using the Post Schedule Updates application. However, posting is optional. CRP can be used successfully to merely model the data in an effort to improve the master schedule but complex changes to the schedule really require the automatic updating that the posting application provides.

Work Center Load Graph

Capacity Requirements Planning shows, graphically, the load that exists in a particular work center during a particular period of time based upon the existing schedule. The planner can quickly determine if capacity is adequate to accommodate the projected load. It is this report and the ability to modify scheduling information in isolation from the active orders that constitute CRP's “What-if Modeling“ capabilities. The planner can modify the schedule and run the Work Center Load Graph over and over in an effort to even out the load on the work center.

Work Center Load Report

The Work Center Load Report presents the same data as the Work Center Load Graph except that it shows detailed information about those orders that contribute to the load. For quicker access, the Work Center Load Inquiry application displays a summarized version of the same data.

Features and Benefits

• Define reporting period lengths to perform unlimited planning
• Maximize facility utilization and minimize delays through CRP's analysis tools
• Increase capacity, decrease the load, or change the schedule to create a realistic production plan and prevent bottlenecks
• Monitor both current work-in-process and planned production concurrently
• Display the scheduled load for any work center on the screen
li> Test various ”what-if“ changes without affecting ”live“ data
• Utilize both forward and backward scheduling techniques around a ”bottleneck“ operation
• Reschedule any number of dependent shop orders when desired
• Calculate capacity to match runtimes to reality by using work center efficiency factors

Integration and Prerequisites

CRP requires Progression's Shop Floor Control module to function. It integrates with Progression’s Master Scheduling, Material Requirements Planning, and Shop Floor Control.