Capacity Planning:

The bottlenecks are scheduled to maximise their throughput of products or services in accordance with the promised completion dates. For example, in the manufacturing of garden rakes involves joining of the bow to head. Head of the rake must be processed on blanking press, welded to the bow, cleaned, and connected to handle to make rake. It is packaged and finally shipped according to the delivery schedule. Let delivery commitments for all kinds of rakes for next month show that welder is loaded at 105 % of its capacity but other processes will be utilized at only 75 % of their capacities. According to TOC, welder is a bottleneck resource, whereas blanking, handle attaching, cleaning, packaging, and shipping process are non-bottleneck resources. Any idle time on the welder is a lost opportunity to generate total value added funds. To maximise throughput of rake manufacturing systems, managers should focus on welder schedule.