How to do capacity analysis for manufacturing

In this article we will discuss basics of capacity analysis. After reading this article you will be able to do capacity analysis for a manufacturing plant.

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Ok lets move forward.

What is capacity

Capacity means ability to do something. In case of manufacturing industry, ability to manufacture a particular quantity of products in a particular time duration.

That’s all….

Pretty simple right?

Yes it is…

What is capacity analysis

Capacity analysis is basically an analysis done to check whether a manufacturing plant can produce a particular no of products in a given period, with available no of resources.

Normally capacity analysis is done on machines or equipment.

There will two outcome of this analysis, either there is capacity or no.

If no, how much more machines need to be added, is also a outcome of capacity analysis.

Very important analysis right?

Ok. Let’s how to do capacity analysis.

How to do capacity analysis

We will learn this through an example..

A manufacturing plant need to produce 150 units per day and we need to do capacity analysis.

And suppose this products requires two operations A and B and its standard times are 5.7 minutes and 8.9 minutes respectively.

Standard times are calculated by a method called time study.

And also operation A and B use two machines X and Y respectively. And presently have one each.

Working time of this plant is 420 minutes per shift (excluding breaks) and this plant operates three shifts per day.

Also on an average 30 minutes is required for both machines for maintenance, down time, change overs, etc.

Also 98% is the yield of the both machines.

Also these two machines is only able to run at 85% efficiency of its standard speed, due to its minor stoppages.

Now let’s calculate.

Considering the minor speed loss, cycle time per product for both machines will be 5.7/(0.85) and 8.9/(0.85) minutes, respectively.

Which is 6.71 and 10.47 respectively.

Also since yield for these machines is 98% weed to produce 2% more of the demand, which is, 150 x 1.02 = 153.

Now lets calculate load on each machines.

Lets calculate load of the machine X…

Which is equal to demand per shift x cycle time

= (153/3) x 6.71

= 342.21 minutes.

Now lets calculate load of the machine Y…

= (153/3) x 10.47

= 533.97 minutes.

Now lets calculate no of each machine required for meeting the demand.

No of the machine X = Load per shift / Available time per shift per X machine.

= 342.21 / (420 – 30)

= 0.88

Which is one machine. And we have enough capacity for doing the operation A. No need to worry.

Now lets check the capacity for operation B.

No of the machine Y = Load per shift / Available time per shift per X machine.

= 533.97 / (420 30)

= 1.36

So we requires two machines for doing operation B.

Ooops here is capacity issue. We only have one machine for doing operation B and we need one more.

That’s it.

We have done the capacity analysis.