What project can do for you is identify your critical path through the
network.
Enter each production step as a task and give it a duration. So, you might
have three tasks -- (1) Paint Component in paint station(0.5hrs), (2) Move to
oven (0.2hours), (3) Bake (4hours).
So, project will tell you how long it will take you to make 1 item if all
goes well.
Personally, I'd attack this problem with Excel.
What Project Cannot do for you is determine que wait times, etc. between
work stations. For example, if you have two ovens that will bake 48
components each you may have a que --- if painting only takes 0.5hours per
unit it is possible you will have 48 units show up at the oven before the
oven can accept them.
In my example, if you paint 1 unit at a time at one station, you will
achieve 48 units only once per day. Project will not know if you are allowed
to bake a partial batch. So, the oven might sit idle. If you have 24 paint
stations, you will que a full batch for each oven every hour.
I am not aware of any software that does this type of analysis for you out
of the box. For certain, with a good dose of VBA programming, you could get
Excel to do it.
This almost touches on Monte Carlo simulations. You may want to look at
something like Crystal Ball (it works with Excel). Then you could make
several production runs and base your capapcity calculation on a statistical
bet of how long each process will take. That is... does painting really take
30 minutes every time, or, is it sometimes 24 minutes and other times 42
minutes.
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If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.
Jim
Visit
http://project.mvps.org/ for FAQs and more information
about Microsoft Project
