Capacity Planner

For many businesses, resource (e.g. tools, machines, labour) capacity is the constraint when planning production runs. The Capacity Planner is a resource allocation reporting and re-planning tool.

Each resource has a capacity which measures the capability of the resource to be used in production for some unit of time to produce some finished good. Knowing how much capacity is needed per finished good, it is possible to calculate how much time is required to produce this or that finished good. This is used to define timelines for production.

The Capacity Planner shows the capacity for a selected planning period, which resources are overallocated, and allows re-planning of capacity.

Note: Capacity Planner is an advanced manufacturing feature. You will need to add the advanced manufacturing module to your Cin7 Core base subscription to use this feature. See Getting Started with the Advanced Manufacturing module for more information.

Prerequisites

Follow the Getting Started with the Advanced Manufacturing Module guide
- Set up Factory Calendar
- Set up Work Centres
- Set up Logistics Path
- Set up Resources
Advanced manufacturing module subscription required.
Users will need the Capacity Planner permission in order to use this feature.

Capacity Planner Interface

The Capacity Planner shows available, allocated and consumed resource units for a selected planning period.

The Capacity Planner can be filtered by:

Resource
Shop Floor
Show overallocated – when Allocated capacity exceeds Available capacity, the resource is overallocated. This means that there is not enough capacity of the resource to complete all Production Orders in time. Overallocated resources have a negative number in the Available column.

Planning period

Select the date range of the Planner using the From and To fields. This defines how much capacity is Total, Available, Allocated and Consumed during this exact period.

Note: Resource capacity is allocated to a Production Order upon Authorization of the order. The available capacity in the Production Order location is reduced, and the allocated capacity is increased.

Once a planning period has been selected, all resources will be shown in a table with the following info. Click the settings gear to choose which columns to add/remove them from the table.

Resource Code	Unique resource code (defined in Resource settings).
Location	The resource location (defined in Resource settings). If a resource has capacity in multiple locations, it will have one line in the Capacity Planner per location.
Total	The total capacity of the resource. It is calculated as: (sum of operational hours per selected planning period - sum of breaks per selected planning period) x number of individual resources at the specified location.
Available	The capacity available for resource per selected planning period. It is calculated as: Total capacity - (Allocated Capacity + Consumed Capacity).
Allocated	The capacity allocated for the production per selected planning period. It is the sum of capacity required to process all planned and released production orders.
Allocated Planned	Capacity allocated for the production per selected planning period. It is the sum of capacity required to process all production orders in planned status. This column is not displayed by default, it can be enabled from the table settings (gear icon).
Allocated Released	Capacity allocated for the production per selected planning period. It is the sum of capacity required to process all production orders with released status. This column is not displayed by default, it can be enabled from the table settings (gear icon).
Consumed	The capacity consumed in the production per selected planning period. It is the sum of capacity spent during the processing of all completed Production Orders.
Total	The sum of the capacity amount per each column per selected planning period.

The cells for Allocated, Allocated Released, Allocated Planned and Consumed columns are clickable and display detailed data.

Consumed Capacity

Pressing the cell for consumed capacity opens up the following sub-table. The consumed capacity table is read-only.

Order #	Production Order number.
SO #	The Sales Order number from which this Production Order is created. N/A is set if the Production Order was created manually or in the case of consolidated orders.
Customer	Customer, Contact, Email from the Sales Order. This cell is unfilled if the Production Order was created manually.
Product	SKU: Product Name from the Production Order.
Sales Representative	Sales Representative from the Sales Order. This cell is unfilled if the Production Order was created manually.
Release date	Production Order Release Date. The field is not filled for the Planned Production Orders.
Planned date	Production Order Planned Date.
Required by Date	Production Order Required by Date. If the order is generated from a Sales Order, this is the Ship by Date.
Number of individual resources per operation	The number of individual resources set up for this operation. If Parallel processing is allowed, this is the number of all available individual resources for this operation.
Consumed capacity	The sum of the capacity consumed by the Production Order.

Allocated Capacity

Pressing the cell for allocated capacity opens up the following sub-table.

Order #	Production Order number (read-only).
SO #	The Sales Order number from which this Production Order is created (read-only). N/A is set if the Production Order was created manually or in the case of consolidated orders.
Customer	Customer, Contact, Email from the Sales Order (read-only). This cell is unfilled if the Production Order was created manually.
Product	SKU: Product Name from the Production Order (read-only).
Sales Representative	Sales Representative from the Sales Order (read-only). This cell is unfilled if the Production Order was created manually.
Release date	Production Order Release Date (read-only).
Planned date	Production Order Planned Date.
Required by Date	Production Order Required by Date. If the order is generated from a Sales Order, this is the Ship by Date.
Number of individual resources per operation	The number of individual resources set up for this operation (read-only). If Parallel processing is allowed, this is the number of all available individual resources for this operation.
Allocated capacity	The sum of capacity allocated for the Production Order.

Planned date and Required date can be edited to reallocate capacity. You can also allow Cin7 Core to attempt to re-plan capacity automatically. See Re-planning Capacity below.

Re-planning Capacity

Capacity can be reallocated in the Capacity Planner according to two options. Re-planning capacity for one order will cause the reallocation of capacity to other orders.

Only Planned Production Orders can be re-planned. Released Production Orders can no longer be re-planned.

Changing the Planned Date or Required by Date (Manual reallocation)
- If the Planned Date is changed, capacity is recalculated from the Planned Date forward. If the Required by Date is changed, capacity is recalculated from the required date backward. Changing the dates means that the capacity will be strictly bound to the set dates. This may cause overallocation. When dates are changed, the Finish button should be pressed so that changes come into force. Such editing causes the reallocation of the resources in the Capacity Planner and in the Scheduler planned orders view.
Using Re-plan (Automatic reallocation)
- When the Re-plan button is pressed, the resources are reallocated automatically. The system will look for available capacity starting from the Required by Date backward to the current date.
  - When capacity is found for the whole order, it is allocated to this order, and dates are updated in the grid.
  - When capacity is not found for the whole order, the user is giving the option to allocate capacity from the Required by Date forward. If the user says 'Yes' and capacity is found, the user is asked to confirm if they want to set the Required by Date to a new date. If yes, the dates are changed, and the capacity is reallocated.
  - If no capacity is found or the user chooses not to change dates, the order is not changed, and the capacity remains overallocated.

Calculating Capacity for nested Production Orders

A Production BOM can contain semi-finished products which are Production BOM products themselves. There can be several hierarchical levels of Production BOM meaning that the final finished product can contain a series of nested semi-finished products. Production Orders for nested semi-finished products are created and planned (resource capacity is calculated) automatically when the top-level order is authorized.

Semi-finished products Production Orders are created in the same location as a finished good Production Order.

Completed semi-finished products should be put away to either the Shop floor location of the top-level order or the connected warehouse location, or the system will not locate them for the top-level order.

These Production Orders are displayed in the Related Orders tab of the top-level finished good. Orders for nested Production Orders are created with the following properties:

The status of the order is Planned.
Required by Date of a nested product = Release Date of the finished product Production Order.
- Since the Release date for the finished product Production Order is not confirmed (release of this order is not done), it is calculated from the default release date for the finished product Production Order. It is calculated the same as for the top-level production order.
Timelines for semi-finished products Production Orders are automatically calculated by the from Required by date backward method. Timelines are calculated for each order separately. The timelines for the finished product Production Order is the sum of all Production Order timelines for the semi-finished products.

Release of semi-finished products Production Orders should be executed manually. This will create related orders (Stock Transfer, Purchase Orders) necessary for that order. These created orders are not visible in the Related Orders tab of the top-level finished product.

If one semi-finished product Production Order is re-planned, all other orders including the finished product Production Order are not re-planned. The user will have to go to the Scheduler and check that any problems caused by the replanning are resolved.