The goal of capacity requirements planning (CRP) is to determine when production orders should be implemented in consideration of capacity. CRP accomplishes this function by calculating and simulating the workload for all machines and production groups, using information from other installed modules in IFS Manufacturing. CRP thus helps you plan your manufacturing activities with optimal efficiency.
Before working with CRP, you must enter certain basic data in IFS Manufacturing. For example, you must enter work centers, i.e., production locations (such as a machine or department) where an operation is to be performed. When entering work centers, you must also specify the unit in which work center capacity is measured as well as the particular work centers' capacity.
In addition, you must enter basic information on structures and operations, which determines how operation scheduling should be done. Operation scheduling in CRP is performed through backward planning with no maximum capacity, with or without overlapping.
Within CRP, you can study resource requirements for a shorter period than is possible with resource planning. The resource demand is calculated based on the manufacturing plan from material requirements planning (MRP), demands from the master schedule beyond the planning time fence, and existing shop orders. CRP uses only the proposals from MRP because existing shop orders are already capacity planned. CRP considers the work centers that are reserved for released and planned shop orders.
Once the calculation is complete, you can study its results in query windows. You can view load per work center to help in identifying bottlenecks and potential overloads in production. You can also study operations to see which ones create a load for a certain work center during a certain period. Based on these projections, you can then change the manufacturing plan or existing and planned shop orders to stay within the capacity limitations of the selected work centers. At the same time, CRP supports future dimensioning of production capacity.