Production capacity planning: 4 solutions to improve efficiency

Production capacity planning is the activity of building production models in a certain industry or organization. Production capacity is understood as the ability to create products and provide services within a specified time and conditions. So how to plan production capacity correctly and effectively? Let's find out with 1C Vietnam in the article below.

1. What is production capacity planning?

Production Capacity Planning is a process that involves identifying and preparing the resources, infrastructure and capabilities needed to meet the production needs of a business quickly. effectively. This plan helps ensure that a company's production capabilities are aligned with production goals and market demand, optimizing production processes and resource allocation.

Accurately planning production capacity will help businesses easily know when they need to add/remove machinery and workers to meet schedule; What are the important steps that must be included to help maximize efficiency, minimize costs, and save resources in factory operations?

2. How to plan production capacity in an enterprise

The production capacity planning process can be done with the help of software. Below are details of the 3 main steps that businesses can refer to for application in their organizations:

2.1. Step 1: Assess current capacity

The first step when planning production capacity is that businesses need to reassess current capacity. If there is support from automatic software, the capacity assessment step will be easier with data automatically updated by the system. In addition, the performance of employees, suppliers, etc. is clearly recorded, helping businesses conveniently compare and evaluate.

2.2. Step 2: Plan clear production capacity

Software combining MES and ERP will provide effective support in this step. Data from MES will be uploaded to ERP, allowing for aggregate demand forecasts and dividing those forecasts into appropriate departments for operation. The software also has the following capabilities:

• Calculate production center capacity based on units or production time.
• Can give an accurate visualization of rough cuts to find bottlenecks with both open and planned orders.
• Flexible with expert scheduling capabilities.
• Businesses can create overall production schedules and adjust to production needs flexibly when applying software to demand planning.

2.3. Step 3: Adjust capacity

Based on analysis from the software, businesses need to make appropriate adjustments and calculate resources to suit their needs.

3. 4 solutions to improve production capacity for businesses

In today's fiercely competitive environment, all businesses must plan detailed production capacity . Businesses need to calculate how to fully meet the needs of customers, providing quality products but still affordable prices. Below are 4 ways to help improve your business's production capacity.

3.1. Planning production capacity with good human resources

Highly specialized human resources are the key to improving production capacity. Enterprises need to have appropriate and personalized employee training strategies for each position to improve overall employee quality, increase labor productivity and increase the quality of output products.

3.2. Innovating machinery and technological equipment

Equipment, machinery and especially production technology are key factors in improving the production capacity of an enterprise. Today, with the rapid change of the market, businesses have to pay even more attention to investing in equipment, innovating systems and applying advanced technology to produce trendy products that meet the needs of customers. market demand.

3.3. IT applications

Currently, most businesses have applied information technology to their operations. However, not all businesses operate effectively. Therefore, businesses need to have a strategy to build a synchronous information technology system to maximize efficiency.

3.4. Develop product quality management system

Enterprises should invest in building product quality management systems including:

• Complete the product quality measurement system.
• Build a system of inspection methods from raw materials to final product output standards.

4. Difficulties in planning production capacity

Production capacity planning brings many benefits and is an important step that cannot be overlooked. However, when conducting planning, administrators may encounter some difficulties as follows:

• Complexity in organizational structure: Production capacity planning is about devising strategies to use available resources effectively to improve production capacity. Therefore, when the organizational structure is too complex, analyzing total resources can cause difficulties for administrators.
• Data explosion: With the current explosion of data science, synthesizing, analyzing and evaluating to make accurate decisions is not easy. Because the amount of data received is huge, sometimes the process of synchronous and accurate forecasting requires investment and effort.

Production capacity planning plays an important role in business success. Nowadays, the capacity planning process can be made easier thanks to the support of ERP, MES software, etc. For support on solutions to help with production capacity planning, please contact with 1C Vietnam.