How to Perform a Manufacturing Capacity Analysis in your Business

Most manufacturers have experienced times where the demand for products or services surpassed the actual available capacity to fulfill those demands. These obstructing situations highlight the requirement for proper analysis of the capacity you have and its usage, to recognize the root of the issues.

Manufacturing Capacity Analysis is the process of recognizing the available capacity for your industry which contains the available inventory holding capacity, machine capacity as well as labor capacity, etc. It also targets to recognize how capacity usage can be optimized to improve the total available capacity of the operations. Efficient use of manufacturing space, labor and optimized equipment performance are vital parameters for companies to drive systematic production and achieve the highest profitability.

What is a Capacity Analysis?

The initial step to take when you are continuously operating under distant capacity is to recognize the obstruction. A capacity bottleneck is a process or operation that has restricted capacity and minimizes the capacity of the whole production plant. Bottleneck leads to delays in production, too much work-in-process as well as can be expensive to the company.

The capacity analysis is basically the difference between potential capacity and the actual output a company currently derives. By gathering production data, manufacturers can easily recognize what process, equipment, or function requires to be changed to improve capacity. This will importantly enable manufacturers to direct greater utilization from their existing resources through process optimization.

There are several ways to improve resource capacity within your facility:

 1. Execute regular maintenance on machines to improve their efficiency. 

 2.Invest in advanced employee training.

 3.Re-align existing capacity to improve the capacity of the bottleneck operation.

 4.Optimize your production schedule to minimize sequence-dependent setups.

Manufacturing Capacity

Every manufacturer always aims to perform its operations at full capacity. So what is the manufacturing capacity? Manufacturing capacity describes the state in which all equipment and resources within a company are used at the highest operation rate for the required product volume. All processes from operations to maintenance are optimized with a correct amount of resources and that too without suffering from unnecessary downtime. When this condition is satisfied, the equipment has reached its full capacity.

A factory may experience a rash of availability losses likewise mechanical failures where more time is required for repair. Or they could lose crucial production capacity because of changeovers, setups as well as adjustments.

Manufacturing capacity can also go through performance losses. These contain untrained or inexperienced operator actions as well as stops for jams, idling, run-outs.

Finally, manufacturing capacity can be adversely affected by quality losses, involving both process defects and yield reductions. Some roots contain an under-optimized workflow, human errors, etc.

Overall, insufficiency of understanding of capacity can trigger costly overtime, waste, or unnecessary capital expenses in the form of new equipment to make up for the loss.

Types of Capacity Planning

There are 3 key types of capacity planning that you require to be up to date with before you get started. Make a plan that will assure that you have the precise amount of everything you require to develop your products and grow your business.

Workforce Capacity

Workforce capacity planning means you will assure that you have sufficient team members working, for the needed working hours in order to build required products.

Equipment Capacity

It is the process of assuring that you have the exact equipment available to generate and complete an order. Based on what you are building this can vary from assembly-line components to drilling machinery.

Product Capacity

Product capacity planning assures that you always have sufficient raw materials and products required to complete an order. 

How to Execute a Manufacturing Capacity Analysis

Industries that execute a manufacturing capacity analysis are capable to minimize downtime and waste. They can also store the data to optimize processes as well as streamline workflows. It will help them to interpret what the existing obstructions are and take real-time decisions to resolve issues as they occur. As data support these solutions, managers can bring out improvements throughout the operation and improve capacity without any extra investment in equipment or labor. Below are few steps needed to unlock the existing capacity to enhance their manufacturing capacity:

Measure Data

Benchmarking contains determining existing capacity. Machine quality losses, speed,  downtime by categories – likewise breakdowns, performance losses – must all be calculated to decide the current capacity. Below are few practices that can be utilized to build a solid and practical framework for benchmarking:

• Internal Conferences: An internal meeting helps to set benchmarks and assures that everyone is on the same page. By carrying the good team together, everyone will know what the utilization aim should be.
• Examine the Data: There are certain situations when the current data says more about the actual machine status. Making sure the data is valuable and exact will assist in monitoring what requires to be done.
• Estimating Data: This is where original presumptions are compared with real current utilization. It describes a new startup point on what improvements can be made.
• Planning: By making an improvement plan, managers can drag together the pieces of original assumptions, the actual data-driven state of capacity and what improvements can be made.

Monitor Downtime

Manufacturers must be conducted a downtime analysis. This process includes managers, technicians, manufacturing engineers, operators, as well as others who can help to recognize all the reasons for downtime and plan how to minimize or eliminate it.

By knowing how much downtime is occurring and what category the downtime comes under, steps for improvement become more visible. The downtime must also classify the reasons for downtime. Various Categories to consider may involve:

• Planned vs. Unplanned Downtime: Each impacts a machine as out of service, but they both have completely various approaches to reduce occurrences and carrying the machine back online.
• Manual Error: In a huge and composite manufacturing environment, operators may have various levels of training or may execute tasks or actions in an order that minimizes efficiency. These can often be noticed via downtime analysis.
• Quality Consequences: Quality is a wide category that must be involved in downtime analysis. It may direct to insights on training, machine state, upkeep, or even surrounding conditions within the facility.

Once the categories are discovered, team members can move on to find out the reasons for downtime within the category.

A capacity analysis enclosed with advanced data capture and analytics can assist companies to find their way to full capacity. With the help of machine condition monitoring solutions, get instant visibility across the factory to notice a drastic improvement in OEE and manufacturing capacity.