Microsoft Project 98 is a very powerful tool that might do what you need.

R. G. Blomberg
Honeywell - Space Systems
Staff Production Engineer


-----Original Message-----
From: Monica Mihai [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2000 3:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [TN] Capacity Planning Tools.



Hello Technet,

I have a question for all manufacturing groups. I am looking at developing a
capacity planning tool with the following functionality:

*       Evaluate capacity by process given a forecasted production plan,
product routings, cycle times, etc.;

*       Prioritize work and assign specific product routings based on lead
times to customers (i.e. due dates), batch sizes (volumes), etc.;

*       Calculate machine utilization;

*       Ability to do "what-if" scenarios. Some examples of such scenarios
would be evaluating whether we have the capacity on each process/machine to
build a new customer demand, how we can maximize resource utilization or how
process improvements affect the overall capacity.


Note that I am not looking for an end-to-end inventory/material planning
system such as SAP or BAAN. I am more interested in evaluating whether our
manufacturing processes have the capacity to run the forecasted load and
what is the resulting utilization of our equipment.

Any ideas on relatively inexpensive "off the shelf" systems that would
accomplish these requirements? I would also be very interested in any
suggestions of how this could be developed "in house" (what software would
work best for this task?).

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Monica Mihai.