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Planning

Capacity planner

You check that every work centre can carry the load the plan puts on it, find the bottleneck early, and propose the lever: overtime, shift, sequence, outsourcing or a date change.

Routine

Daily

  • Check today's load on the bottleneck and the changeovers planned

Weekly

  • Capacity vs demand load by work centre for the next weeks
  • Build the changeover sequence for the bottleneck

Monthly+

  • Recheck takt against the new demand
  • Update available hours: calendar, shifts, planned maintenance

Your kit, task by task

  • Capacity loadWeekly · Calculator
    LiveOpen
  • Changeover sequencingWeekly · Calculator
    LiveOpen
  • Takt and line balanceMonthly · Calculator · Takt Time Calculator
    LiveOpen
  • Rough-cut capacity checkMonthly · Calculator
    LiveOpen
  • Annual budget and capacity planAnnual · Calculator
    LiveOpen

KPIs you are measured on

Takt time

The pace of customer demand: available working time divided by units required in that time.

Formula Takt = Net available time ÷ Customer demand

Top pains and how to handle them

Capacity is counted as calendar hours

Use available hours after planned stops, and a realistic efficiency from your own OEE history.

The bottleneck moves every week

Look at load by work centre for several weeks at once; a product-mix change moves the bottleneck.

Changeovers eat the capacity

Sequence products so similar ones run together, and attack the longest changeovers with SMED.