[AccessD] planning

Actually it gets a bit messy when you get down to the details.  I know 
because I had to do this for my manufacturing app.

First, you need to define the work centers - give them a capacity in minutes 
per day.  You may also want to have a calendar of downtime days where your 
capacity is zero. You may also want to enter their wage and burden rates so 
that, in addition to calculating capacity, you can calculate costs - both of 
products and of the proposed production schedule.

Then you need to have a table of routings - the steps through which a 
manufactured item goes, from one work center to another.  Routings have to 
include queue time, setup time and unit run time which needs to be 3 or 4 
decimal places because when you get into something like plastic injection 
molding the unit run times are very short.

Then you need a table of demands - part number, order number, desired finish 
date, desired start date, and quantity.

>From those inputs you can begin to calculate each day how many minutes of 
each work center's capacity is being utilized.  You also have to decide 
whether to use finite or infinite capacity planning.  In finite capacity 
planning the finish dates are moved around based on the capacity constraint. 
You can't load a work center over 100% capacity.  In infinite capacity, the 
reports show where the work center is overloaded  but doesn't move the dates 
around on you.

Finally, you need a way to present the results in a way that's usable.  I 
settled on two formats - one tabular - like a work center dispatch report - 
showing all the work that is flowing through a specific work center for a 
given date window, and the other graphic - showing on a scale of 0 to 200% 
what the utilization of each work center is day by day.  So it's easy for 
the user to eyeball and find the over and under utilization.

HTH

Rocky Smolin
Beach Access Software
http://www.e-z-mrp.com
858-259-4334

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Darsant Silverstring" <darsant at gmail.com>
To: "Access Developers discussion and problem solving" 
<accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2005 9:17 AM
Subject: Re: [AccessD] planning


> On 5/20/05, Johncliviger at aol.com <Johncliviger at aol.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all
>> I've been asked to investigate whether Access or Excel is a  suitable 
>> tool to
>> develop a production capacity calculator.  As I know sweet  nothing about
>> production capacity calculations I wondered whether anyone on  this list 
>> has
>> experience in using Access for production capacity  calculations.
>>
>> What I mean about  production capacity calculations is: You have so  many
>> machines with so many people and so much time and material, how many 
>> units  of
>> production can I make.
>>
>> TIA
>>
>> john c
>
>
> I've never done production calculations myself, but as far as
> capabilities for calculations, Access and Excel will be practically
> the same for all intents and purposes.
>
> What you'll have to see if whether or not the production capacity
> calculations require more than simple data. If all they want is to be
> able to say I've got this many people, time, and material, plug it
> into this complicated forumula (full of constants) to spit out the
> data, then I'd just hardcode it into excel.
>
> If they want to use past production data to try to analyze and make a
> prediction for a future amount, this you'd probably want to handle
> with access.
>
> Both can be suitable tools, it really all just comes down to what
> scale they want to use it at.
>
> -- 
> Josh McFarlane
>
> "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."
> -Albert Einstein
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