Capacity planning is the act of balancing available resources to meet customer demand or project capacity needs. In project and production management, capacity refers to the amount of work that can be completed in a given period of time. There are three types of capacity planning that you can use in different scenarios to optimize production capacity. One challenge that production programmers face is to keep track of all the factors that affect capacity planning.
To know how much capacity will be available in the near future, you'll need to have a better overview of your equipment's assignments, vacation time, and utilization rates. The PSA software provides visibility into continuous capacity planning in the long, medium and short term in operations management. This type of capacity planning software is used to create a roadmap for all members of the organization, from project managers to resource managers and high-level executives. For professional services or project-based organizations, capacity planning or service capacity planning involves understanding the scope and schedule of all current and planned work and the availability and skill set of the people who will perform the work. Virtually every element of your production environment must be taken into account for effective capacity planning.
The right PSA for your organization will be the one that allows you to scale your business efficiently, taking advantage of demand and controlling operating costs. Capacity planning, like no other process, serves as the basis for hiring decisions, reducing gaps in skill sets. For example, engineering managers calculate capacity planning based on the number of hours needed to complete a project. When creating a capacity plan for a project, you can use it as a template for a similar project in the future. Capacity planning is a process for determining resources and, when properly implemented, alerts you in advance about resource shortages. Based on your initial estimates, estimate the capacity you'll need to complete the work you foresaw in the previous step.
Overstaffing, the accumulation of timely tasks, conflicting priorities, and customer complaints can all be the result of poor capacity planning. Project capacity planning is the process by which project managers calculate the amount of time that their assigned team can work in a given period of time to balance workloads with project execution milestones. To solve the problem of limited capacity, you'll need an overview of the entire set of resources that allows you to monitor everyone's assignment and be in perfect sync with your projects and timesheets. While the benefits of effective capacity planning in operations management include being able to take on more projects, avoiding employee exhaustion, and better customer service in a tight labor market, it can make a company succeed or fail.