Implementing Manufacturing and Materials Management: From Empty Plant to Costed Work Order · Module 9 · Work Areas, Work Centers and Resources
Modelling the shop floor
Lesson 87 of 188 · 3 min
Three objects. A work area is a region of the plant. A work center is where an operation happens. A resource is the labour or equipment that does it. Work areas contain work centers. Work centers have resources assigned, with capacity. That is the whole model. Now the design question, and it is the only interesting thing in this lesson. A work center per machine? Per cell? Per department? Finer gives better scheduling and costing detail. Coarser is far easier to maintain and to transact against. Model at the level you will schedule and cost at. If you do not schedule individual machines, do not create a work center per machine. That is the rule. It sounds obvious and it is routinely violated, because the plant has individual machines and modelling them feels like accuracy. And the operator's view matters, which is the half of this decision nobody raises in…
The full lesson is part of the course
The video, the complete written lesson and the module quiz are included in Implementing Manufacturing and Materials Management: From Empty Plant to Costed Work Order, with a certificate on completion and a fourteen-day refund window.