Question

Capacity smoothing

  • 7 June 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 70 views

Badge +4

We have high forecasted demand for many parts on several work centres in January 2024, with these requisitions resulting in an overload on these work centres. We are not able to increase capacity on these work centres. We have available capacity in October, November and December where we could produce them in advance. 

We have planning time fences of maximum 20 days for the manufactured parts. 

Ideally we would want the available capacity to be filled pulling forward any requisitions that overload the work centres in January. Some of the purchased components in the product structures have long lead times and will need to be ordered in July for production in October. 

What possibilities do we have to do this without manually pulling forward and creating shop orders for October, November and December and without using order gap time? 


2 replies

Userlevel 6
Badge +12

Hello,

Have you tried/looked into Rate By Period functionality that is available from Applications 9 in Master Scheduling?

That functionality offers to set a rate per Day or per Week during a time interval. The system does not help you to set the rate, but once it is set system starts to level (smooth) the production. So let say you have a weekly rate of 100 pcs in January, and you have let say a weekly forecast of 150, then system will schedule the production to start earlier than January. It tries it best to not go over those 100 pcs per week. The only exception is that it does not schedule production within Planning Time Fence.

I can also mention that it is possible to enter 0 as rate… meaning to set the part temporary on hold.

Of course this leveling on MS planned parts will have impact upstream in the supply chain.

I think I stop my explanation here and let you digest my reply.

Well, MS Rate by Period together with Time Phased Safety Stock could be very useful in times of Inventory build-up

Cheers 

Badge +4

Thank you for the response and suggestion to look at rate by period. We have tried that and do not find that as a good solution. Considering the high number of parts over numerous work centres defining the rates is difficult and the result was not as expected.

 

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