Strategic Capacity

Planning for
Products and
Services

McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Copyright © 2012 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 You should be able to:
1. Summarize the importance of capacity planning
2. Discuss ways of defining and measuring capacity
3. Describe the determinants of effective capacity
4. Discuss the major considerations related to developing
capacity alternatives
5. Briefly describe approaches that are useful for
evaluating capacity alternatives

Instructor Slides 5-2

 Capacity
 The upper limit or ceiling on the load that an operating
unit can handle
 Capacity needs include
 Equipment
 Space
 Employee skills

Instructor Slides 5-3

 Goal
 To achieve a match between the long-term supply
capabilities of an organization and the predicted level of
long-term demand
 Overcapacity operating costs that are too high
 Undercapacity strained resources and possible loss of
customers

Instructor Slides 5-4

 Key Questions:
 What kind of capacity is needed?
 How much is needed to match demand?
 When is it needed?
 Related Questions:
 How much will it cost?
 What are the potential benefits and risks?
 Are there sustainability issues?
 Should capacity be changed all at once, or through several smaller
changes
 Can the supply chain handle the necessary changes?

Instructor Slides 5-5

 Capacity decisions
1. impact the ability of the organization to meet future demands
2. affect operating costs
3. are a major determinant of initial cost
4. often involve long-term commitment of resources
5. can affect competitiveness
6. affect the ease of management
7. have become more important and complex due to globalization
8. need to be planned for in advance due to their consumption of
financial and other resources

Instructor Slides 5-6

Design capacity
 Maximum output rate or service capacity an operation, process, or
facility is designed for
Effective capacity
 Design capacity minus allowances such as personal time,
maintenance, and scrap
Actual output
 Rate of output actually achieved--cannot
exceed effective capacity.

Instructor Slides 5-7

 Measure capacity in units that do not require
updating
 Why is measuring capacity in dollars problematic?
 Two useful definitions of capacity
 Design capacity
 The maximum output rate or service capacity an operation,
process, or facility is designed for
 Effective capacity
 Design capacity minus allowances such as personal time and
maintenance

Instructor Slides 5-8

 Actual output
 The rate of output actually achieved
 It cannot exceed effective capacity
 Efficiency
actual output
Efficiency 
effective capacity
 Utilization
actual output
Utilizatio n 
design capacity
Measured as percentages
Instructor Slides 5-9
 Design Capacity = 50 trucks per day
 Effective Capacity = 40 trucks per day
 Actual Output = 36 trucks per day

actual output 36
Efficiency    90%
effective capacity 40

actual output 36
Utilizatio n    72%
design capacity 50

Instructor Slides 5-10

 Facilities
 Product and service factors
 Process factors
 Human factors
 Policy factors
 Operational factors
 Supply chain factors
 External factors

Instructor Slides 5-11

 Strategies are typically based on assumptions and
predictions about:
 Long-term demand patterns
 Technological change
 Competitor behavior

Instructor Slides 5-12

 Capacity Cushion
 Extra capacity used to offset demand uncertainty
 Capacity cushion = 100% - Utilization
 Capacity cushion strategy
 Organizations that have greater demand uncertainty
typically have greater capacity cushion
 Organizations that have standard products and services
generally have greater capacity cushion

Instructor Slides 5-13

1. Estimate future capacity requirements
2. Evaluate existing capacity and facilities; identify gaps
3. Identify alternatives for meeting requirements
4. Conduct financial analyses
5. Assess key qualitative issues
6. Select the best alternative for the long term
7. Implement alternative chosen
8. Monitor results

Instructor Slides 5-14

 Long-term considerations relate to overall level of
capacity requirements
 Require forecasting demand over a time horizon and
converting those needs into capacity requirements
 Short-term considerations relate to probable
variations in capacity requirements
 Less concerned with cycles and trends than with
seasonal variations and other variations from average

Instructor Slides 5-15

 Calculating processing requirements requires
reasonably accurate demand forecasts, standard
processing times, and available work time
k

pD i i
NR  i 1
T
where
N R  number of required machines
pi  standard processing time for product i
Di  demand for product i during the planning horizon
T  processing time available during the planning horizon
Instructor Slides 5-16
 Service capacity planning can present a number of
challenges related to:
 The need to be near customers
 Convenience
 The inability to store services
 Cannot store services for consumption later
 The degree of demand volatility
 Volume and timing of demand
 Time required to service individual customers

Instructor Slides 5-17

 Strategies used to offset capacity limitations and that
are intended to achieve a closer match between
supply and demand
 Pricing
 Promotions
 Discounts
 Other tactics to shift demand from peak periods into
slow periods

Instructor Slides 5-18

 Once capacity requirements are determined, the organization
must decide whether to produce a good or service itself or
outsource
 Factors to consider:
 Available capacity
 Expertise
 Quality considerations
 The nature of demand
 Cost
 Risks

Instructor Slides 5-19

 Things that can be done to enhance capacity
management:
 Design flexibility into systems
 Take stage of life cycle into account
 Take a “big-picture” approach to capacity changes
 Prepare to deal with capacity “chunks”
 Attempt to smooth capacity requirements
 Identify the optimal operating level
 Choose a strategy if expansion is involved

Instructor Slides 5-20

 Leading
 Build capacity in anticipation of future demand increases
 Following
 Build capacity when demand exceeds current capacity
 Tracking
 Similar to the following strategy, but adds capacity in relatively
small increments to keep pace with increasing demand

Instructor Slides 5-21

  An operation in a
sequence of operations
whose capacity is lower
than that of the other
operations

Instructor Slides 5-22

 Average cost per unit

Minimum
cost

Optimal Rate of output

Output
Rate
Instructor Slides 5-23
 Economies of Scale
 If output rate is less than the optimal level, increasing
the output rate results in decreasing average per unit
costs
 Diseconomies of Scale
 If the output rate is more than the optimal level,
increasing the output rate results in increasing average
per unit costs

Instructor Slides 5-24

 Economies of Scale
 If output rate is less than the optimal level, increasing
the output rate results in decreasing average per unit
costs
 Reasons for economies of scale:
 Fixed costs are spread over a larger number of units
 Construction costs increase at a decreasing rate as facility
size increases
 Processing costs decrease due to standardization

Instructor Slides 5-25

 Diseconomies of Scale
 If the output rate is more than the optimal level, increasing the
output rate results in increasing average per unit costs
 Reasons for diseconomies of scale
 Distribution costs increase due to traffic congestion and
shipping from a centralized facility rather than multiple
smaller facilities
 Complexity increases costs
 Inflexibility can be an issue
 Additional levels of bureaucracy

Instructor Slides 5-26

 Minimum cost & optimal operating rate are
functions of size of production unit.
Average cost per unit

Small
plant Medium
plant
Large
plant

Output rate

Instructor Slides 5-27

 Constraint
 Something that limits the performance of a process or system in
achieving its goals
 Categories
 Market
 Resource
 Material
 Financial
 Knowledge or competency
 Policy

Instructor Slides 5-28

1. Identify the most pressing constraint
2. Change the operation to achieve maximum benefit, given
the constraint
3. Make sure other portions of the process are supportive of
the constraint
4. Explore and evaluate ways to overcome the constraint
5. Repeat the process until the constraint levels are at
acceptable levels

Instructor Slides 5-29

 Alternatives should be evaluated from varying
perspectives
 Economic
 Is it economically feasible?
 How much will it cost?
 How soon can we have it?
 What will operating and maintenance costs be?
 What will its useful life be?
 Will it be compatible with present personnel and present
operations?
 Non-economic
 Public opinion

Instructor Slides 5-30

 Techniques for Evaluating Alternatives
 Cost-volume analysis
 Financial analysis
 Decision theory
 Waiting-line analysis
 Simulation

Instructor Slides 5-31

 Cost-volume analysis
 Focuses on the relationship between cost, revenue, and
volume of output
 Fixed Costs (FC)
 tend to remain constant regardless of output volume
 Variable Costs (VC)
 vary directly with volume of output
 VC = Quantity(Q) x variable cost per unit (v)
 Total Cost
 TC = FC + VC
 Total Revenue (TR)
 TR = revenue per unit (R) x Q

Instructor Slides 5-32

 BEP
 The volume of output at which total cost and total
revenue are equal
 Profit (P) = TR – TC = R x Q – (FC +v x Q)
= Q(R – v) – FC

FC
QBEP 
Rv

Instructor Slides 5-33

Instructor Slides 5-34
 Capacity alternatives may involve step costs, which
are costs that increase stepwise as potential volume
increases.
 The implication of such a situation is the possible
occurrence of multiple break-even quantities.
Instructor Slides 5-35
 Cost-volume analysis is a viable tool for comparing
capacity alternatives if certain assumptions are
satisfied
 One product is involved
 Everything produced can be sold
 The variable cost per unit is the same regardless of volume
 Fixed costs do not change with volume changes, or they are step
changes
 The revenue per unit is the same regardless of volume
 Revenue per unit exceeds variable cost per unit

Instructor Slides 5-36

 Cash flow
 The difference between cash received from sales and
other sources, and cash outflow for labor, material,
overhead, and taxes
 Present value
 The sum, in current value, of all future cash flow of an
investment proposal

Instructor Slides 5-37

 Capacity planning impacts all areas of the organization
 It determines the conditions under which operations will have to function
 Flexibility allows an organization to be agile
 It reduces the organization’s dependence on forecast accuracy and reliability
 Many organizations utilize capacity cushions to achieve flexibility
 Bottleneck management is one way by which organizations can enhance
their effective capacities
 Capacity expansion strategies are important organizational considerations
 Expand-early strategy
 Wait-and-see strategy
 Capacity contraction is sometimes necessary
 Capacity disposal strategies become important under these
conditions

Instructor Slides 5-38