Whenever you are dealing with any foreign supplier to outsource your products, you must evaluate your supplier properly. You must know the manufacturing capacity of the company, which is one of the important parameters. Maple sourcing can also help you to find this information.
These days, most businesses prefer to outsource from China, as one can get almost all kinds of products at very low cost from this country. So, let us try to understand in this post how you can evaluate any Chinese company before you enter into any business deal with the company.
What is manufacturing capacity?
In manufacturing, ‘capacity’ is the maximum output a unit can produce over a certain period, impacting efficiency, profitability, and success.
Factors influencing capacity include:
– Machinery type
– Workforce skill
– Production efficiency
– Raw material availability.
How to calculate manufacturing capacity?
The following are a few ways to measure how much capacity the manufacturer has:
1) Manual capacity measurement
This simplistic and inaccurate method involves counting products produced during peak operation. It only provides historical capacity data, with no insight into potential changes.
2) Rough-cut capacity planning
This method calculates productive hours per machine per day, considering the following:
– Shift length
– Workforce
– Average downtime
– Time to complete one product.
These variables help determine the maximum output under current conditions, aiding in product scheduling to meet demand. However, RCCP (Rough Cut Capacity Planning) ignores process order, changeover times, and material availability, potentially causing bottlenecks that increase production time and reduce overall capacity.
3) Capacity planning and scheduling
This method helps predict future capacity, requiring significant planning. The manufacturing control process for each product is broken into small steps, identifying workstation and machine availability, including setup times, material availability, and customer lead times.
Manually, this approach is time-intensive, so most manufacturers use an MRP system to manage it. Matics’ solution connects to the MRP system, transforming it from a static system reliant on manual data input to a dynamic system that constantly pulls real-time information from machines.
Conclusion
A manufacturing operation’s capacity affects its overall success, profitability, and efficiency, making it a crucial concept in the industry. Optimizing manufacturing operations and making better decisions can be helped by having a thorough understanding of the many types of capacity, the factors impacting capacity, the techniques of measuring capacity, and the strategies for capacity planning.
Even though capacity is a multifaceted, intricate term, it may be effectively controlled with the correct information and resources. A manufacturing facility can increase productivity, satisfy demand, and accomplish its objectives by comprehending and controlling capacity.