Capacity Utilization - How to do a capacity utilization project

A

Andy_80

I work for an engineering services co and my team caters to GM. we are a tem of 12 people. Let me explain the process we do before asking anything.
We do the PPAP approval for GM NAVO from India. All the suppliers who are suppliy parts to GM get their currnet PPAP approved from us,it is on line. All the team members are divided based on the comodities like power train n exhaust, seats and wiring harness ect.....the amount of work load is not measured.sometimes its too high.
I want to do a capacity utilization project. I'm sure we have to hire more heads to do this work but I need to justify this to my management with numbers and statstics.
can we do this using the sixsigma tool or how do we go abot it.
 
B

Bill Pflanz

Andy_80 said:
All the team members are divided based on the comodities like power train n exhaust, seats and wiring harness ect.....the amount of work load is not measured.sometimes its too high.
I want to do a capacity utilization project. I'm sure we have to hire more heads to do this work but I need to justify this to my management with numbers and statstics.
can we do this using the sixsigma tool or how do we go abot it.

A six sigma tool is not necessary. The real problem you have is that you freely admit "the amount of work load is not measured" even though you say it is "sometimes too high".

Before you start asking for more heads, you may want to start collecting some data on the number of requests received, the time it takes to process them, and various ratios on the time per request per employee. If not all requests take equal time to process than you may have to collect the data by commodities.

As you are collecting the data, you may also want to find out if some team members are over utilized while others have spare capacity. If so, then you could do some work sharing rather than hiring more people.

Bill Pflanz
 
S

sspoldir

A bit late to the party but...

It sounds like your talking rough cut capacity planning, which is rather straight foward (again rough cut). How many parts/products/widgets can you produce in a given period of time (typically calculated per hour).

Then chart that out on a bar graph against the orders you have or the forecasted orders per week or month. If at any point those numbers go above the hours available then you have a capacity problem and need to "flatten" it out into another time period or find ways to raise the capacity level.
 
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