Capacity planning
Capacity planning matches production capacity (machines, labor, and supplier throughput) against projected demand over multiple horizons. Long-range planning sizes plants and lines, rough-cut capacity planning checks the master schedule against bottleneck resources, and finite scheduling sequences the daily work. At every level it answers the same question: can we actually build the plan, and if not, what has to change?
Examples
Finding the constraint: Demand is 450 units per shift against 27,000 available seconds: a 60-second takt. The slowest station cycles at 72 seconds, capping output at 375 units. Options priced: a parallel fixture at that station ($85,000, ready in 6 weeks) or a partial second shift ($31,000 a month, available immediately).
Supplier ramp check: A molder's 4-cavity tool on a 45-second cycle yields about 320 parts an hour, or 4,800 across two shifts. Ramp demand is 6,200 a day. The buyer orders an 8-cavity tool 16 weeks ahead of ramp, inside the tool's lead time, instead of discovering the gap at start of production.
Definition
Capacity questions repeat at three horizons. Strategic: how many lines, shifts, and plants over the next 2 to 5 years, decided alongside S&OP volumes. Tactical: does this quarter's master production schedule overload any bottleneck resource. Execution: which jobs run on which machines tomorrow.
The arithmetic is takt-style. Divide available production time by required output: a line with 27,000 productive seconds per shift facing demand of 450 units has a takt of 60 seconds, and any station cycling slower than that caps the line. Capacity is rarely the nameplate number; subtract changeovers, downtime, yield loss, and absenteeism to get what is actually available.
Buyers do capacity planning too, just on the other side of the purchase order. A quote means little if the supplier cannot hit volume, so sourcing and NPI ramps should verify tooling cavities, shift patterns, and capacity already committed to other customers; chronic shortfalls become supplier development projects. Direct-materials teams use platforms like LightSource to capture supplier capacity commitments alongside quotes during sourcing, so the check happens before award rather than after the ramp slips.
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