Common capacity modelling for multi-site planning: case studies

Capacity planning is a pivotal activity that is in compliance with company´s long-term business goals, meanwhile also guides the short-term production scheduling, material and resource preparation, in-bound and out-bound logistics. Because of current strong globalization trend, manufacturers are more willing to go to regional or globalism by setting-up plants closer to customers in order to reduce operation costs. Accordingly, mid-term capacity planning paradigm has shifted from algorithm-based solutions for single production site to collaboration-oriented planning in multiple manufacturing plants. By studying the planning processes under multi-site circumstance, this paper proposes a common capacity model, which can play as a mediator to facilitate the dissemination of capacity related information and event, and benchmarking among plants. Ontology based solution is the key for the creation of the common capacity model. Two types of ontology - object ontology and behaviour ontology - will be discussed in this paper for multi-site capacity planning. The paper will also introduce two case studies to highlight the need for multi-site capacity planning from industry.