Capacity planning software that shows load per work center, day by day
Capacity planning answers a simple question the whole plant depends on: can we make all of this, on these machines, by these dates. ProductionPlanning.ai answers it per work center, per shift and per day, from the orders you actually have.
Capacity management software built on real shifts
Capacity starts with the calendar. Each work center has its shifts, its holidays and its planned downtime, and the scheduler turns that into available hours for every day. Load is the scheduled work on the same days, including setup time.
- Available hours per work center, per day, from shift calendars
- Load from scheduled operations, including changeovers
- Utilisation per work center for the day, the week and the planning horizon
- Overloaded days marked on the load chart
- The bottleneck work center named for the period
How the available hours are calculated is explained in how to calculate machine capacity.
The bottleneck sets the output of the whole plant
Every plant has one work center that limits how much it can ship. An hour lost there is an hour lost for the plant, and an hour saved anywhere else changes nothing. Capacity planning software that names the bottleneck tells you where overtime, a second shift or an extra operator pays back, and where it does not.
- Bottleneck identified from the load of the current schedule, not from habit
- What if versions: add a shift on the bottleneck, rerun, compare late orders (Plant plan and above)
- Grouping of similar jobs to cut changeovers on the bottleneck (Plant plan)
Read the full guide on finding and fixing a production bottleneck.
Capacity planning questions, answered with a scenario
What the best capacity planning software should answer is not a utilisation chart but a decision. Four common ones:
- Can we take this new order? Add it, run the schedule, and see its finish date and what it pushes late.
- Do we need a third shift? Add it to the bottleneck only, and compare on time performance.
- What if the press is down for two days? Mark it down, reschedule, and see which orders move.
- Can we move work to the older machine? Set it as an alternative work center and let the scheduler use it.
On the Plant plan and above, each scenario is a plan version you can compare side by side before anything changes on the floor.
From rough cut to finite capacity
Rough cut capacity planning checks the master production schedule against total hours per week. Finite capacity scheduling checks every operation against every shift. ProductionPlanning.ai does the second, which also answers the first.
See the load on your own work centers
Run the demo, switch off a work center, and watch the load and the bottleneck move.
Your data stays yours. Export or delete it any time. No card to try the demo.