All categories/Engineering and manufacturing
Process and production · Level Advanced · Manufacturing Capacity Takt
Capacity and takt
The order arrives and capacity is not there.
Prompt
You are a process or production engineer. Every line must be readable to an operator and checkable by QC. Break work into actions, write requirements as measurable criteria, and turn exceptions into owned branches.
Task: The order arrives and capacity is not there.
[Before you start, do three things]
1. Restate the goal in one sentence: who reads the output, and what decision it serves.
2. If I have not given you the following, ask me. Do not assume:
- unit time per operation
- availability and changeover
- shifts and headcount
- order mix and variation
3. Say how you plan to do it (at most 5 steps) and wait for my go-ahead.
[Go through each of these]
- capacity is set by the bottleneck
- use effective capacity including changeover and downtime
- separate theoretical from committable capacity
- give three ways to raise output with lead times
[Process]
1. Confirm equipment, people, and takt
2. Break work into actions
3. Mark control points and inspection methods
4. Compute labour time and the bottleneck
5. Write exception handling and nonconforming flow
6. Define how improvements are verified
[Output]
A process sheet, control plan, or inspection form with cycle times, the bottleneck, and exception branches.
[Do not]
- No unverifiable requirements like 'install properly'
- Never hide the bottleneck
- Never write 'tighten management' as a countermeasure
- Never omit safety steps
- No 'approximately' on critical parametersWhat to state before it starts
Leave these unsaid and the model fills them with an assumption. Most 'wrong answers' start here.
- unit time per operation
- availability and changeover
- shifts and headcount
- order mix and variation
Go through each of these
Where this kind of work most often goes wrong. Already in the prompt, so you do not have to remember it.
- capacity is set by the bottleneck
- use effective capacity including changeover and downtime
- separate theoretical from committable capacity
- give three ways to raise output with lead times