Short-term Capacity Planning in Manufacturing Companies with a Decentralized Organization

Bottleneck stations have a production rate lower than the demand rate for parts they are producing. Therefore they limit the production system ’s output rate. Short-term capacity planning ’s purpose is to reduce the bottlenecks’ negative impact on the output rate. This paper discusses several opportunities to adjust capacity to the system ’s requirements in a decentralized production organization. Since these opportunities are related to additional costs, it is crucial to find a costefficient solution of this problem. For this purpose, a linear model is proposed which can be used to determine the optimal mix of short-term capacity adjustment measures. The model can be recalculated easily to take the actual output and capacity requirements into account if any deviations from the original plan occur.