Capacity Requirements Planning
Capacity requirements planning (CRP) is “the function of establishing, measuring, and adjusting limits or levels of capacity. … the process of determining in detail the amount of labor and machine resources required to accomplish the tasks of production.” Source: APICS® Dictionary, 10th edition, stock number 01102.1 / 02, ISBN: 1-55822-191-3
The module makes it very easy to plan capacity requirements and update the production plan – a task usually considered difficult. It offers very convenient tools to graphically represent production programs. You can make daily adjustments to the production plan with just a few clicks, and the edited operation moves to another day or hour.
How does CRP work?
When a new product for manufacturing is entered in the system, It needs to be assigned a production technology which defines the machines and the length of processing it is supposed to go through.
In order for the production technology to be described, the system needs to have information about the available resources (machines) and their production capacity.
When the system calculates a production schedule, it checks the needs of all products and tries to match them with the available resources. The system sorts orders according by priority and monitors production deadlines. If there is a problem that interferes with the time limit, the system will warn you and mark the order in red, so you can check it and decide how to proceed.
Although the system can automatically calculate production schedules, the final decision is yours. You can approve a schedule or modify it.
It is often necessary to implement emergency orders, which rearranges the approved plan. To avoid this situation, production management theory recommends to plan a resource load of 75% -95%, depending on manufacturing specifics and batch sizes, but never 100%.
Capacity requirements planning requires efforts – you need to enter information about you resources, technologies and products in advance. But this work will pay off because ERP.net CRP will drastically increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your employees in charge of planning.