Capacity planning is an integral aspect of a business.
Capacity planning helps structure growth to ensure the organization maintains a competitive edge in a constantly changing marketplace to meet demand.
One large benefit of capacity planning is that it helps businesses with budgeting and scaling so they can identify optimal levels of operations.
Additionally, capacity planning helps determine how services are offered, and the appropriate time frames and staff required to meet current demand and cover all operational costs.
This budgeting benefit from capacity planning is very important. It’s especially critical consideration when establishing yearly budgets to effectively allocate money for expenses. Along with demand planning software and demand forecasting software, companies can develop more accurate financial projections.
There are also scaling benefits to capacity planning.
For example, if your business is considering taking on more staff to help meet anticipated demand based on their capacity plans, you might find that aside from increasing employees by 10%, you need specific skills or a larger location for staff and any new equipment requirements.
Capacity planning strategy involves the process used to determine the resources manufacturers need to meet the demand for their products or services. The level of capacity directly relates to the amount of output in the form of goods and services manufacturers can produce to satisfy customer demand.
Effective capacity planning strategies can guide manufacturers on how much raw materials, equipment, labor, and investment in facilities need to be acquired over a period of time to meet the future demand over products. When there is a lack of capacity planning, customers’ needs are not served promptly and these customers may be lost to competition.
The Lead Strategy, for instance, involves an upfront investment in more capacity that is needed and is one of the most aggressive approaches used. Manufacturers plan to increase their capacity in advance even before the actual demand increases.
This strategy resolves anticipated demand increases. Many manufacturers use this strategy to gain market share against competitors. This is also used when competitors are prone to inventory shortages especially when demand skyrockets.
Want to know more about Capacity Planning? Tonex offers Capacity Planning Training, a 4-day course that covers tactics for doing performance analysis, system sizing, performance measurements, trend analysis in today’s challenging business and IT environment.
Tonex also offers several other courses in Cloud Computing Training. For more information, questions, comments, contact us.