Improving capacity planning at Acheson Colloiden B.V.

Acheson Colloiden B.V. is a company that produces lubricants, inks and coatings based on the dispersion of graphite elements in oil or water. The research conducted was focused on improving capacity planning methods for the production department of Acheson. The reason for investigating this topic was the identification of insufficient capacity planning which have negative impact on due date performance, lead times and inventory levels. The main cause of insufficient capacity planning at Acheson is the lack of insight in the capacity of the production department, which means that it is not clear what the maximum output per period of time is that can be expected and which factors determine this maximum. Therefore, this research was especially aimed at improving this insight and suggesting how these different factors should be embedded in the capacity planning methods to improve its performance. The distinction between labor resources and machine resources was used to differentiate between different relevant factors in this analysis. A pilot study was performed on one work cell to investigate this topic in detail.