Capacity Planning Tool

We have a new capacity planning tool for you.

It takes in sales order data, calculates total demand and production load and then
compares that to available capacity.

You can add your own data, and use this to predict the production capacity that is
required and available to meet customer demand.

This capacity planning tool is an updated version of the one we have previously
published here. There are a number of improvements, including:
 Better handling of produced parts in the bill of materials
 Integrated text files for input data
 Calculation of production lead-time offsets through a working calendar
 Faster to run and easier to use
 Written using the latest Fast Excel Development Template
Tutorial on Using The Capacity Planning Tool

Let’s start with the Input Files and the menu sheet.

First, if you are using Excel 2007/10 and have not run macros before, then you need
to adjust your Excel security settings to enable macros.
All Fast Excel tools are designed to connect to text files. Text files are the best way to
ensure that the planning tool is working with fresh data.
The tool comes ready with the input text files already to run. The text files should go in
the location “FilePath Input Local” on the menu sheet. If you hit the button “Create Input
Files in this Location” then the tool will create the necessary input files.

Each of the five green sheets represents an input data table. You can make changes to
the data in these sheets and then hit “save Change and Output”. If you do not do this,
the text file import will override your manual changes with the existing text file.

BOM

This is a multi-level BOM with all the parent-child relationships between sales product,
produced part and raw materials.
This capacity planning tool supports a two- or three-level BOM. If you have more than
three-level BOM, then you need to use exploded demand instead of sales orders.

Routing

needs to list all of the operations and work-centers required to do the work to produce
each of the finished and produced parts in the BOM.

If there is an item code missing from the Routing, the Capacity Planning routine will
ignore it and you will not have the demand represented in the production load.

Each of the Work Centers listed in the Routing needs to be included in the WorkCenter
table.

The Offset Days represents the production lead-time that you allocate to each
operation.

Work Centers
Work Centers are groups of resources that can each perform the work specified in the
routing. They are resources of labour, machines or a combination of both.

The work center capacity is defined by a calendar. Read more about Calendars and
capacity planning here.
To allocate the work center to a calendar, each is given a shift pattern. The shift pattern
identifies a weekly pattern of shifts that the work center is available to do work or
perform setups.

The example SP_11x8 shows eleven times eight-hour shifts in a week.

You can also define the calendar at the work center level. However, it is more usual for
a group of work centers to work to the same hours. Using shift patterns means that you
don’t need to manage separate calendars for each work center. The shift patterns need
to be included in the calendar sheet.

Calendar

Calendars give capacity planning it’s capacity. They show the shift periods over which
the work center is available. The calendar period needs to comfortably cover the due
dates minus the offset days.

The example here shows the calendar for a single work center. It has 2 shifts of 12
hours each day.

The Shift Pattern can be either a single work center or a shift pattern ID that represents
multiple work centers as above.

It is important for this data to be properly formatted according to Excel date

times. Here is a brief tutorial on Excel date format and how they can be used for
capacity planning.
Sales Orders

Last, by no means least we come to demand. Sales orders are the usual form of
demand. However, this could be an Master production schedule, replenishment plan or
exploded demand from an MRP system.

The important fields here are item code (to link with Bill of Materials and Routing),
quantity and due date. Be sure that the calendar sheet covers a period that includes
these due-dates.

Reports

The Capacity Planning tool has 2 reports:

WC_Report. This shows the hours of load and capacity for each work center. The
work center is changed by the filter in the pivot table.
WK_Report shows the hours of load and capacity for all the Work Centers in a given
week. The week is selected in the pivot table filter.