Using concurrent capacities in production (Business Central)

Business Central/NAV
1

Dear All,

I am trying to set up concurrent capacities in production however it seems to me that it does not actually affect scheduling. E.g. I have set the concurrent capacity to 2 (I have tried both on the machine center card and in the routing), and I would expect the production time to be 50% of the original time, but the calculated production time on the production order is still the same.

Any ideas what is missing to make this work?

Thanks a lot,
Sandor

2

Concurrent Capacity does not shorten the duration of an Operation. It allows for more than one Operation to happen at the same time on a Work/Machine Center. If the Machine has a Concurrent Capacity of 2, then it can handle two Operations where the Concurrent Capacity on each Operation is equal to 1. If your Operation has a Concurrent Capacity of 2, it consumes both slots on the Machine (but does not reduce the time required for the Operation to complete).

There is a hidden field on the Routing line called “Lot Size”, this would allow you to define a multi-cavity mold for example. The system knows you are producing more than 1 at a time from the Operation, so the duration of the Operation is reduced.

Hope this helps shed some light on how the fields are used.

Best Regards,
Ben Baxter
Accent Software, Inc

3

Thanks for your reply, Ben!

Actually I am using the lot size, and it works well. (Our client is a baking company and they make dough in batches of 600 kg; so I set the lot size to 600, this way the running time is meant for the whole batch, not for 1 kg.)
However the use of concurrent capacity is still not very clear to me. The help text says: “Specifies the number of machines or persons that are working concurrently.”
In the case of our client, there are 2 machines making dough that sometimes work paralelly (sometimes not). When they work paralelly, the time needed is less, of course. So, I thought using concurrent capacities for this, but maybe I am wrong.

I have checked these pages for some explanation about concurrent capacities, and I understood that it does reduce the production time.

(These are about NAV, but I suppose that BC works the same way.)

Thank you if you can give some further clarification.

Best,
Sándor
FITS Hungary Consulting

4

Sándor - you are correct that using concurrent capacities does not reduce the total production time and can in fact increase total production time.

Example: I have a production order that has 2hrs setup and 12 hours of run time on a CNC machine (but have 2 CNC machines) - using 1 concurrent capacity we would have a total of 14 hrs. over two days (open 8 hrs a day)

If we now change concurrent capacities to 2 we would have 2 setups for 4 hours plus the 12 hours for a total of 18 hours. However for scheduling we would be completing the prod order in 1 day with being open 8hrs a day. Setups will be planned for each concurrent capacity if you are using setup.

Hope this helps - Best Regards
John Grant
Innovia Consulting