We recently blogged about capacity planning in the oil & gas industry using IBM Cognos TM1. In short, by using TM1 for capacity planning, a business can better understand how to maximize the capacity it has on hand, how to plan for expected increases and decreases in supply and demand, and how to capitalize on market opportunities to increase physical capacity at the most optimal times.

One of our clients, one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of roofing materials, with nearly 30 plants and a large variety of products created from different materials, wanted to optimize and create efficiencies for the products it manufacturers. They specifically wanted a capacity planning model that incorporates each plant, the multiple lines each plant runs, the products per line and per hour, and the shifts in the plant, and the length of those shifts.

With TM1, the manufacturer can now reallocate back in time if the data reports that a plant’s capacity has been exceeded. It can also report if a plant is currently exceeding capacity, or if a plant is performing under capacity. The capacity planning model provides red flags when it sees plants underperforming, enabling management to make decisions around whether they need to add additional shifts to those lines, or to move manufacturing of a specific product to a different plant.

Read about capacity planning in the manufacturing industry.