An effective two-phase dynamic capacity allocation methodology for production resources

Effective utilization and management of production capacity have significant impact to the success of a manufacturing enterprise. In a complex manufacturing environment, the development of a feasible capacity allocation mechanism is a challenging task. In this paper, the issue of achieving balanced capacity allocation for effective planning of production resources was addressed in a medium- to long-term capacity planning framework. A two-phase dynamic capacity allocation methodology was developed which adopts a proportional loading method using weighted capacity and considers product and machine loading priorities and bottleneck operation constraint. The first phase of the capacity allocation process is to consume dedicated production resources while the shared production resources will be dealt with in the second phase, considering the bottleneck constraint The incorporation of actual operational constraints in the capacity planning process provides a realistic and practical solution, which enhances the enterprise's ability to react quickly to ad-hoc customer enquiries and dynamic demand changes