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80 SMT Magazine • September 2017 effect to everything lined up behind it. This cre- ates the instant need to reschedule everything else and changes our available outlook on ca- pacity. It may also add unnecessary overtime or temporary labor to accommodate the change. A robust clean-to-build tool is essential to ensure your material readiness. A model within your material portion of this plan should address how material is kitted or staged for production in such a manner as to not impede the production plan. If people must stop to hunt down material or look for missing parts when the available time slot has arrived, then the time spent looking for the material is now eating into your available capacity and ef- fecting your standards as well. At MC, we have invested in Rapid Response from Kinaxis. This is an advanced planning tool bolted to our MRP system where you can do multiple simulations without changing your live MRP data. We run material "what ifs" simulations to determine the projected date for all material availability at the site. With this information, we can then make a high-level prediction on when we most likely will complete the order based on our ex- isting capacity state. Obviously, what tools you use to develop these material strategies to reduce shortages can vary. This article is not intended to address the particulars surrounding the corrective action, only to point out the area of concern and high- light it as an area of concern when implement- ing a CP tool. 2. All Machines are up and running effectively (output). A typical CP plan will usually assume that all equipment is up and running and available to the operators who use it. Some models do al- low for the input of additional queue times to allow for set-up which may include program- ming time and tooling adjustments. Unfortu- nately, this only masks legitimate process ac- tivities. Queue times are caused by either in- sufficient capacity to process one-piece flow or batching logic created by minimum order quantities. Queue times may be inevitable but should always be predictable and should not contain miscellaneous activities that should be more visible to the scheduling tool. All equipment used in the manufacturing of a device or processing of a product should be identified early on and noted in the speci- fications of your internal process. Ownership should be identified as to the responsible par- ties that will ensure that the identified equip- ment has been reviewed, calibrated, cleaned, maintained and certified as "ready for use". Of course, there will always be unplanned, unex- plained and occasional catastrophic types of failures that will cause a "line down" situation but these should be the exception and not the rule. 3. All labor standards have been reviewed and validated (input). This process step should begin with the re- view or creation of labor standards for each as- sembly type or model that will be run through the shop floor environment. Who reviews the data isn't as important as the act of the review itself. Improper labor standards can skew the working model greatly and conceal available capacity or result in overcommitting existing hours. Once the standards have been reviewed they need to be documented and stored in some manner that is either tied to a specific review date or revision for each appropriate assembly. With constant engineering change activity, it is easy to have a standard become obsolete quick- ly through the addition or deletion of certain process steps. For this reason, there should be an owner or panel of owners tasked with the IMPLEMENTING A CAPACITY PLANNING TOOL Figure 4: A worker assembles an aerospace electronics component.