We want to define capacities for our work centers to optimize our manufacturing planning. (BaaN IVc4, SP7)

We use BaaN now for quite a while an have still some problems with capacities ...
a) when we plan new production orders, BaaN puts the Work to the work centers regardless of the capacity defined. this means, we end up having work centers way over the capacity limit
is there a way to tell baan to use only the capacity available, and if no more capacity is left shift the work to another week ??

b) how to define capacities for main work centers ???
for example: the sub-work centers have their daily capacity, e.g. 8 h, do we set the main work center to "sum-of-sub-work-centers" or to 0.1h ?
when we would set it to the sum-of-sub's, this would mean our main-work center has far to much capacity. in reality it is just a dummy for the sub-work-centers

We do not use MRP, MPS or other planning methods. it's all manual production orders.

Help is very much appreciated.

Dear gentercz,

Baan normally plans with infinite capacity (as all other ERP packages). You have to use the planning engine in order to have capacity constraints. This means you have to plan orders. I do not see any solution for you, unless you are going to use the planning engine (MRP/MPS + constraint planning):rolleyes:

Hi,
first of all: planning to unlimited capacity ist standard functionality. It's up to the user to take action in order to resolve the capacity bottleneck. The MRP helps you to detect those orders wich have to be rescheduled (rescheduling messages). Why don't you use this feature?
For detailed production planning we use the graphical planning board. Very useful in our case, but it requires exact production rates in the routing and a daily update of the operations which have been finished.

Hope that helps,

Martin

thanks guys for your quick response ...

@martin
You wrote:
The MRP helps you to detect those orders wich have to be rescheduled (rescheduling messages). Why don't you use this feature?

how does this work, and is it difficult to set up ?

as far as graphical planning is concerned we use this too to shift work. but my users find this sometimes tricky or uncomfortable to use ...

I'm afraid the MRP messages Martin is referring to will not help the level loading problems you are talking about.

The Mrp messages (reschedling messages) ignor capacity and look at required dates.

They can infact tell you to add more work to an already over booked day.

Standard functionality assumes you want infinite capacity and the ability to maintain it manually.

There is no magic here, short of adding a finite planning tool.

s

Standard Baan capacity is infinite. MPS/MRP ( based upon your plan periods set up, reschedule message selection and usage of consumption logic for forecast and planned orders) will advise you with reschedule messages for your planned orders.

These messages ONLY advise you when the supply and demand within a period are not balanced. The system still assumes that infinite capacity is available.

Michael,

This is why Baan tried to get Moopi up and running a few years back. The problem is that not only do you have to consider the capacity of the workcenter but you also have to take into account the availability of the resources. If a machine is out for repair or a technician is on vacation all you have is the capacity of the workcenter. I implemented the Moopi product a few years ago and found it worked fairly well. The problem at that time was exporting and importing data between the two systems. I believe that this has been addressed since that time.

Good luck.

gentercz,
I agree with stephan that rescheduling messages ignore capacity. They only look for the requirements one step higher in the hierarchy of materials. The top level in this hierarchy are the sales orders. Some say that 'Distribution is Leading' in Baan.
If rescheduling messages should give you an advice for optimizing your production planning your salesorders should have passed a rough capacity planning. Otherwise everything ends up in an endless struggle.
Think of what you are doing today to resolve the capacity problems and try to tranfer this to Baan logic.

Good luck :D

Martin