In any manufacturing or service operations, a manager is confronted with the key questions like, whether they can meet the projected demand or not? Whether the necessary resources will be available at required time or not? What shall be the associated cost? How can be varying product mix with fluctuating demand met? These questions arise because the capacity is ‘finite’. On one hand, the different orders are to be delivered at committed time with specified quantity. At the same time one cannot enhance resources outright. These finite resources are decided with long range (term) planning and are to be operated on medium range and short range time intervals.
M/s Eimco Elecon (I) Limited manufactures different type of mining equipment and supplies to government mining corporations through tenders. A mining equipment is an assembly of varieties of electric, mechanical and hydraulic systems and involves welding, machining of cast and forged components with complex geometries. The company has produced 206 equipments in year 2008-09. The projected demand for next year is ~350 units. Naturally, the manager has to think that how he can manage the demand, how much with the existing facilities? How much of the demand has to be met by subcontracting/ overtime or cannot be met? As the orders may comprise of product mix of their product range (3 types of mining equipment comprising more than 15 different models with different specifications) and are to be delivered within average of 8-16 weeks. The company has state of art machine-shop equipped with CNC machines. The varieties of component parts or sub-assemblies like front frame, rear end support, main frame, etc. are routed through machine-shop.
The company management feels that their machine-shop is capable to meet the requirement. However, an assessment of capacity utilization is necessary, as the available hours are not efficiently used for production. The aim is to the enhance rate of production from existing capacity by improving the utilization and efficiency.
The present work is an attempt to determine the capacity utilization and its effectiveness of the machine-shop so as to work out the rated capacity. To measure the capacity the available hours of the relevant machines and hours used for production are required. Apparently it looks simple to get data of available hours and the production hours from the records. However there are many deceptions like available hours for which machines are to be counted, for the entire machine-shop or typical one? How the production hours to be found out? Another difficulty is to define capacity in numbers for such a product mix. The present work addresses these questions. A methodology has been devised to determine available hours and production hours based on rough cut capacity evaluation. It is also felt that the data collected from the route sheet to determine production hours is not reflecting the true capacity. Hence a sample study of recording production hours is devised and carried out. Such studies are very useful to the company in capacity evaluation, capacity planning and capacity management.
M/s Eimco Elecon (I) Limited manufactures different type of mining equipment and supplies to government mining corporations through tenders. A mining equipment is an assembly of varieties of electric, mechanical and hydraulic systems and involves welding, machining of cast and forged components with complex geometries. The company has produced 206 equipments in year 2008-09. The projected demand for next year is ~350 units. Naturally, the manager has to think that how he can manage the demand, how much with the existing facilities? How much of the demand has to be met by subcontracting/ overtime or cannot be met? As the orders may comprise of product mix of their product range (3 types of mining equipment comprising more than 15 different models with different specifications) and are to be delivered within average of 8-16 weeks. The company has state of art machine-shop equipped with CNC machines. The varieties of component parts or sub-assemblies like front frame, rear end support, main frame, etc. are routed through machine-shop.
The company management feels that their machine-shop is capable to meet the requirement. However, an assessment of capacity utilization is necessary, as the available hours are not efficiently used for production. The aim is to the enhance rate of production from existing capacity by improving the utilization and efficiency.
The present work is an attempt to determine the capacity utilization and its effectiveness of the machine-shop so as to work out the rated capacity. To measure the capacity the available hours of the relevant machines and hours used for production are required. Apparently it looks simple to get data of available hours and the production hours from the records. However there are many deceptions like available hours for which machines are to be counted, for the entire machine-shop or typical one? How the production hours to be found out? Another difficulty is to define capacity in numbers for such a product mix. The present work addresses these questions. A methodology has been devised to determine available hours and production hours based on rough cut capacity evaluation. It is also felt that the data collected from the route sheet to determine production hours is not reflecting the true capacity. Hence a sample study of recording production hours is devised and carried out. Such studies are very useful to the company in capacity evaluation, capacity planning and capacity management.