Capacity Planning in Repetitive Manufacturing

Purpose

Repetitive manufacturing uses capacity leveling to carry out capacity planning for production lines. You use the planning table in repetitive manufacturing to carry out capacity planning and capacity leveling.

The planning table is laid out in periods and gives you an overview of dates and quantities for materials and production lines.

The planning table allows the planner to dispatch production quantities. He can check the production quantities at a glance as well as the current capacity load for the production line and the availability situation for the products. Flexible strategies for automatic dispatching enable you to create a production plan that optimizes use of capacities. Since planning frequently relates to shifts, the planning table for repetitive manufacturing was enhanced for Release 4.0 by adding several functions in shift planning.

In repetitive manufacturing, you have two options for executing capacity leveling:

  • With the planning table

  • With parallel processing using the planning table and the capacity planning table that you call up from the planning table

Changes that are made in the capacity planning table are immediately visible in the planning table and vice versa.

Integration

Scheduling levels

There are three scheduling levels in capacity planning: Detailed planning, rate-based planning and rough-cut planning. For capacity planning in repetitive manufacturing, it is rate-based planning and detailed planning that are most important. In the planning table for repetitive manufacturing, only capacity requirements can be displayed that are based on rate-based scheduling or detailed scheduling.

To display capacity requirements for scheduling lines or planned orders in the planning table, the following conditions must be fulfilled:

  1. To carry out capacity planning at rate-based level, you must specify a routing in the production version under rate-based planning. This generally involves a rate routing. However, you can also select any other type of routing. To carry out capacity planning at a detailed level, you must specify a routing in the production version under detailed planning.

  2. In the production version, you must specify a work center for the operation in the above routing as a production line. The work center is generally a "production line". However, you can also specify another work center.

    If you are working with the application component Line design, then you must have created a Line Hierarchy for the production line and have designed a work center in the line hierarchy as the Scheduling Work Center . You enter the line hierarchy in the field Production line and the scheduling work center in the field Scheduling work center in the production version.

  3. In Customizing for capacity planning under Operations -> Scheduling -> Scheduling parameters for planned orders, you must define for production lines (planned orders with the order type PE) whether capacity planning is to be executed as rate-based planning or detailed planning. You must also select the following fields:

  4. Generate capacity requirements

    Date determination

  5. If you want to execute capacity planning on the planning table for planned orders with the order type LA and for production orders, create entries for the corresponding scheduling levels and select the above fields.

  6. You specify which planning level is to be used on the initial screen for the planning table. You can save this setting for specific users.

Layout of capacity data on the planning table

How capacity data is presented on the planning table and the strategy that is used in the capacity planning table for dispatching operations is controlled using capacity profiles. You can find these in Customizing for capacity planning under capacity leveling. There you can maintain the so-called overall profiles that are in turn made up of individual profiles. Generally there is one profile for the planning table (SAPREMG001) and one profile for parallel processing on both planning tables.

If you want to define your own profiles, you have the option of specifying a profile with the parameter-ID KP1 in the user master. This profile is then used instead of the standard profile for the planning table. If you save a profile using the parameter ID KP2, this profile is used for parallel processing.

When creating your own profile for parallel processing, you should note that for the assigned control profile, both a periodic and a continuous layout are possible. You define this layout by setting the indicator layout type 3 in the control profile.

You can find out what data is behind the profiles in Customizing for capacity planning. You should only make changes to profiles for specific purposes. The following are examples of possible changes:

  • Changing the time period for capacity planning

  • Changing the dispatching strategy for the capacity planning table

  • Changing the display and dimension of graphical elements