The date is promised before anyone knows the capacity
Sales commits to a delivery date because the customer needs it. Whether engineering,
manufacturing and assembly can hold it across the whole lead time only becomes clear
weeks later – by which point replanning is expensive.
With Kapa App
Run the scenario before you commit: can we deliver this order on this date? The answer
takes minutes, not until the next meeting.
The bottleneck keeps moving
Sometimes engineering stalls, sometimes machining, most often assembly and
commissioning. Look at one department alone and you simply push the problem into the
next one.
With Kapa App
Demand against capacity by department – engineering, manufacturing, assembly,
commissioning – side by side across several months. The bottleneck shows up before it
arrives.
Hour budgets overrun, and it surfaces too late
Every order carries a costed budget of hours. That it has been exceeded often shows
only in the post-calculation – by then the margin is long gone.
With Kapa App
A running plan-versus-actual comparison of hours per order. Deviations surface while
there is still time to act on them.
Many orders in parallel, each at a different stage
One-off and small-batch work means one order is in engineering, the next in assembly,
the third already at the customer's site. Planning lives in Excel and project plans
beside the ERP system, so no overall view ever emerges.
With Kapa App
Orders and changes come straight from your ERP system. Every order sits in one plan
with its stages, and each state is saved as a traceable version.
Key skills are scarce – and often out on site
There are only a handful of welders, electricians, programmers for programmable logic
controllers (PLC) and commissioning engineers. When they are at a customer's site they
are missing from the works, and the works plan does not know it.
With Kapa App
A skills matrix shows who can do what, including availability during site work.
Planning warns you before two orders need the same person.
Order intake swings, and the decisions are expensive
The business is cyclical. Hiring, bringing in agency staff or subcontracting – each of
those commits money for months, and the basis is usually a gut feeling.
With Kapa App
Scenarios for different paths of order intake show from when subcontracting or agency
staff become necessary – and from when they no longer are.
