Capacity Requirement Planning (CRP) is a vital process in SAP Production Planning (PP) that ensures work centers have the necessary capacity to meet production demands. By evaluating and optimizing work center capacities, CRP helps organizations identify underload or overload situations and resolve bottlenecks to maintain smooth production workflows.
What Is Capacity Requirement Planning (CRP)?
CRP is performed after the Material Requirements Planning (MRP) run to assess and balance the load across work centers. It involves:
- Capacity Evaluation: Checking if a work center has sufficient capacity to handle all planned production orders based on scheduled dates.
- Capacity Leveling: Adjusting order schedules or quantities to distribute workloads evenly and prevent overloads.
The ultimate goal of CRP is to optimize the utilization of work center capacities while minimizing production delays.
Key Components of Capacity Requirement Planning
1. Available Capacity
The available capacity of a work center is the foundation for capacity planning. It is calculated based on several factors maintained in the Capacity View of the work center master data:
- Operating Time: Start and end times of work center operations.
- Break Durations: Scheduled breaks that reduce effective working hours.
- Capacity Utilization: The percentage of time a work center is effectively used.
- Individual Capacities: The number of units (e.g., machines or employees) available to perform operations.
The factory calendar assigned to a work center determines the working days. If a specific calendar is not assigned, the system uses the plant’s factory calendar. Organizations can also define capacity intervals for specific time periods to account for seasonal or shift-based variations.
2. Capacity Evaluation
This process involves analyzing the capacity situation of a work center to ensure it can meet the requirements of all planned orders. The system compares the total load from production orders, planned orders, and other requirements with the available capacity. If a work center is overloaded, adjustments must be made to avoid production delays.
3. Capacity Leveling
Capacity leveling distributes the workload in a linear or balanced fashion across the available time periods of a work center. This process ensures:
- Overloaded work centers are relieved by rescheduling orders or reducing order quantities.
- Underutilized work centers are optimized to handle more workload.
Capacity leveling can be performed manually or automatically in SAP, depending on the complexity of the production scenario.
Transactions Codes for Capacity Evaluation
SAP offers several transactions to evaluate capacity at a detailed level:
- CM01 (Load): Displays the load on the work center, showing planned and actual capacity requirements.
- CM02 (Orders): Lists the orders contributing to the capacity load, providing order-specific details.
- CM03 (Pool): Displays capacity requirements for a group or pool of work centers.
- CM04 (Backlog): Highlights overdue orders that have exceeded their scheduled dates.
- CM05 (Overload): Focuses on identifying and managing capacity overload situations.
Example: Calculating Available Capacity
Imagine a factory operates three shifts from 6:00 AM to 6:00 AM the next day, with a total break of 2 hours and 15 minutes. If the factory calendar specifies 5 working days per week:
- Operating Time: 24 hours/day – 2.25 hours (breaks) = 21.75 hours/day.
- Capacity Utilization: If utilization is 90%, effective capacity = 21.75 × 90% = 19.575 hours/day.
- Number of Capacities: If the work center has 3 machines, total capacity = 19.575 × 3 = 58.725 hours/day.
Benefits of Capacity Requirement Planning
- Optimal Utilization: Maximizes work center efficiency and minimizes idle time.
- Bottleneck Resolution: Identifies and mitigates overload situations.
- Improved Scheduling: Aligns production schedules with available resources.
- Enhanced Planning Accuracy: Provides data-driven insights for better production management.
By leveraging tools for capacity evaluation and leveling, organizations can ensure their production processes are efficient, timely, and aligned with business goals.