ABSTRACT
Trends, seasonal variations, and random fluctuations must be taken into consideration in planning manufacturing capacity, either by setting it high enough to meet the peak demand or by setting it lower and building ahead, or by a combination of both approaches. On an electronic spreadsheet with sales data, a manager can extract growth trends using built-in analysis tools, filter out daily fluctuations with moving averages, and assess the responsiveness of manufacturing by plotting production and sales data on the same chart. Seasonality, or variability, analysis supplements Product-quantity analysis by examining and quantifying patterns of variation over time have a bearing on capacity planning decisions. One might expect manufacturers of components or subassemblies that are upstream from the final assembly in the supply chain to have market-induced variations dampened by filtering through the final assembler’s production planning and scheduling system.
