Capacity Planning
Open Manufacturing → Capacity Planning to check whether current production commitments fit within the hours available at your workstations.
ERPX reads the operations in eligible production plans, schedules them against the available workstation hours, and calculates expected dates. The results show overloaded workstations and late jobs so the planner can adjust priorities, add capacity, or revise a delivery date.
A schedule can only be as accurate as its setup. Daily operating hours, machine capacity, operation time, batch size, and BOM routing all feed this result. If any value is only a placeholder, the calculated dates will also be unreliable.
Before you calculate
Confirm that:
- the production plans you want to schedule are approved or already in process;
- BOM operations have a workstation type and sensible standard time;
- workstation types have Daily Operating Hours;
- enough active workstations exist for each required type; and
- unavailable or maintenance machines have the correct availability status.
See Shop-floor Setup for those records.
Running a capacity check
Choose how work should be prioritised
FIFO schedules the oldest-created plan first. Earliest Deadline gives priority to the work due first. FIFO gives a predictable order. Earliest Deadline is often more useful when customer dates vary.
Set the planning horizon
Choose a start date and one week, one month, three months, or a custom end date. A short horizon is easier to act on. Use a longer horizon for a broad warning, then narrow it when you are ready to make scheduling decisions.
Select Calculate
ERPX schedules the eligible plans and reports delivery risks, missing setup, and work that runs beyond the selected range.
Read the Production Plan View first
This view shows each plan and its dependency tree. Expand a plan to see the sub-assemblies and operations that drive its dates. Select a plan for more detail. Approved, In Process, and Material Requested plans can also be used to create work orders or job cards from here.
Check the calendar and workstation views
Use Calendar Timeline to see when work is scheduled. Use Workstation Utilization to find machine groups with too much load or very little load.
Save a snapshot before making a major change
Select Save Plan, give the snapshot a useful name, and then change the priority or capacity. Comparing the fresh result with the saved snapshot makes the trade-off visible instead of relying on memory.
The three result views
| View | Best used for |
|---|---|
| Production Plan View | Understanding the item and operation sequence, reordering plans, adjusting allocation, and opening a plan’s details |
| Calendar Timeline | Seeing overlap, idle gaps, and when work is expected to start and finish |
| Workstation Utilization | Finding overloaded workstation types and spare capacity |
You can download each view as a PDF, or use Combined PDF for a complete planning pack.
Manual priority and workstation allocation
Drag plans into the order you want when a real-world commitment should override the selected algorithm. The screen marks this as Manual Order. Clear it when you want to return to FIFO or Earliest Deadline.
Where several machines can perform the same type of work, adjust the allocation to reflect the capacity of each machine. Recalculate after every change because moving a bottleneck can affect several later dates.
Simulating future demand
Simulate Future Demand answers a useful sales question: “If we accepted this quantity today, when could it be delivered?” Add one or more items, enter the quantities, arrange their relative priority, and calculate again.
Simulated items are scheduled after real production plans. They do not create a plan, reserve stock, or confirm a delivery date. Once the order is confirmed, create the production plan and run the capacity check again.
Alerts that need attention
| Alert | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Delivery at Risk | The calculated finish is later than the required date |
| No Workstation Type | An operation has nowhere to be scheduled |
| No Capacity | The required type exists but has no usable workstation hours |
| Circular BOM | A BOM eventually refers back to itself |
| No BOM Operations | The item has material requirements but no schedulable operation |
| Exceeds Selected Range | The work continues beyond the horizon you chose |
| Exceeds Delivery Date | The calculated completion misses the plan’s date |
Do not respond to every alert by extending the date range; this does not remove the capacity problem. For a delivery risk, open the plan and find the first overloaded operation. Then decide whether to change priority, use another workstation, add overtime, revise the routing, or agree on a new customer date.
Saved plans and comparisons
A saved plan is a snapshot, not a live schedule. Fetch opens exactly what was saved. Compare shows what was added, removed, or changed between the current result and that snapshot. Saving again creates a new snapshot; it does not overwrite the one you loaded.
Include the change being tested in the saved-plan name. For example, use “Week 36, normal shifts” and “Week 36, Press 2 overtime” instead of saving both as “Capacity Check”.
When the result looks wrong
| Symptom | Check first |
|---|---|
| Every job finishes too quickly | Operation time, batch size, and daily operating hours |
| One machine group is always overloaded | Missing workstations, inactive machines, or operations mapped to the wrong type |
| A plan does not appear | Its status, BOM, and operations |
| Dates begin in the past | The selected start date and the plan’s existing schedule |
| Utilisation is zero | The operation has no workstation type, or the workstation has no capacity |
| A saved result differs from today | That is expected; snapshots preserve the inputs and calculation at the time they were saved |
Related pages
- Production Plan: the demand being scheduled
- Shop-floor Setup: where capacity and standard times are maintained
- Floor Plan: the live physical view of those workstations
- Work Orders: the work created from the schedule