Find what’s missing: strategies for reclaiming your trapped capacity

Citation

Johanson, S. (2011), "Find what’s missing: strategies for reclaiming your trapped capacity", Strategic Direction, Vol. 27 No. 9. https://doi.org/10.1108/sd.2011.05627iaa.013

Find what’s missing: strategies for reclaiming your trapped capacity

Article Type: Abstracts From: Strategic Direction, Volume 27, Issue 9

Johanson S.APICS - The Performance Advantage, 2011, Vol. 21 No. 2, Start page: 32, No. of pages: 4

Describes how the more chaotic a planning environment becomes, the more capacity gets lost during execution, and this disorder results in an effect called trapped capacity, where trapped capacity is the amount of time consumed on a production line to correct for variability on both the supply and demand sides. Explains the nature of trapped capacity using a worked example. Argues that any manufacturing system can run either with excess inventory and capacity or become lean and proactive with effective capacity management. Offers three simple steps to achieve the latter goal, namely: model the environment in statistical terms; build quarterly run strategies that everyone agrees to follow; and be disciplined and adhere to the run strategy. Shows how, when the company is stable in its capacity planning, it can begin to recover its trapped capacity through strategies that cover: variability elimination; variability concentration; complexity reduction; flexible manufacturing; and demand shaping.Article type: ViewpointISSN: 1056-0017Reference: 40AK168

Keywords: Distribution management, Manufacturing, Manufacturing systems, Operations management, Organizations, Productive capacity