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September 2017 • SMT Magazine 79 IMPLEMENTING A CAPACITY PLANNING TOOL ning process. Forecast information may be un- reliable or nonexistent because of many compa- nies migrating to a "just in time" philosophy— without buffering capacity to accommodate unplanned demand fluctuations (Uncle Russ making an unannounced visit!). As such, we as EMS providers need to adjust and adapt to this new trend or will suffer the consequences in- cluding loss of business. Master scheduling is a considerable task all by itself, not using a CP model in conjunction with the MRP tool can be a considerable waste of time and can be very detrimental to those concerned with meeting production schedules. The master scheduler or planner needs to know at the time an order is taken or being proposed what the next available slot or opening in man- ufacturing can be and what priority the order may have relative to existing orders already confirmed. How else can an accurate delivery date be predicted let alone be committed to? To not do so assumes that you have infinite capac- ity available to you, and we all know that capac- ity is always finite. Capacity equates to cost and cost must always be covered by price so under- standing one's capacity and scheduling within the confines of capacity is as much of a prudent cost consideration as it is a customer service requirement. The large, Tier-1 EMS providers have the luxury of dedicating specific produc- tion capacity to specific customers. Their slop- piness in production planning is masked by the repetitive nature of large manufacturing runs while the costs are inevitably passed back to the customer who is basically "renting" the produc- tion capacity. In the high-mix/low-volume en- vironment of the mid-tiered EMS world, capac- ity must be constantly planned and flexed over a broader customer base. The ability to do so of- fers a competitive advantage to the better mid- tier EMS partners. Now having made up your mind to com- mit to a CP model, determine what platform you will run it on. This can be something as simple as a manual system, spreadsheet or da- tabase. More sophisticated models will employ the use of a classical MRP system or a custom or "canned" software tool. There are several that exist today. A word of caution, before invest- ing heavily into an off the shelf software tool: it would be a good idea to determine how easi- ly the data you will load can be transferred into a more permanent system later. Look for a sys- tem that will work well out of the box without having to manipulate it or customize it greatly. This will save time and numerous man-hours on the front end of your implementation plan. In our case, (and most likely in your case de- spite the ERP platform your company has) we historically used spreadsheets to fill the gaps in our CP process. We recognized the flexibility obtained by using spreadsheets. As an enhance- ment to infuse efficiency into the capacity plan- ning process, we have invested in VENA, where we can control and share spreadsheets for many of our business functions. This makes the user interface easier to adopt and offers the ability to better integrate the capacity planning into our broader business applications. Once the determination of the platform is accomplished, return to the nine assumptions given earlier in this article as the framework for a possible implementation plan. Let's take one at a time and discuss the intent or plan behind each one. 1. Ensure that all material is available (input). Nothing can stop a 2,000-lb car from mov- ing better than a missing five-cent piece of hard- ware. This is the theory here as well. To plan ap- propriately, all production work going into the plan cannot be plagued with constant starts and stops. Material shortages effecting a work order or kit will have a serious "trickle down" Figure 3: Workers using precision equipment to assemble medical devices.