Optimisation · Capacity & scheduling
How do we get more out of the plant and crews we have?
When capacity is tight, the order you run jobs in matters as much as how many you take on. We find the real bottleneck and build schedules that get more profitable output from the same machines, people and vehicles.
What it's worth: Every extra hour at the bottleneck is sold at full contribution margin.
Maurer rose, k = 0 … 360
Signs this is costing you
Does any of this sound familiar?
- Lead times keep growing although machines and crews look busy.
- The schedule lives in one planner's head, or on a whiteboard.
- Changeovers, overtime and expediting eat into margin.
- You're considering new equipment or hires to fix a capacity problem.
- Field crews spend more time travelling than working.
What we do
How we approach capacity & scheduling
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1
Find the real constraint
We measure utilisation, queues and downtime across the process to locate the bottleneck, which is often not where people expect.
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2
Model the operation
Routings, cycle times, changeovers, skills and shifts, captured in a model that reflects how work actually flows.
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3
Optimise
Mathematical optimisation and simulation to sequence jobs, allocate crews and plan routes against your priorities: margin, due dates or throughput.
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4
Hand planners a tool
A scheduling tool your planners run every day, with the reasoning behind each schedule visible.
What you get and what we need
What you get
Deliverables
- Bottleneck and utilisation analysis
- Scheduling model for production, shifts or routes
- Capacity plan for growth scenarios
- Before-and-after comparison on your own historical orders
What we need from you
Data and time
- Order or job history with due dates
- Routings and cycle or job times
- Shift patterns, crew skills and availability
- Downtime, changeover or travel records, if you have them
Exports or spreadsheets are fine. Cleaning the data is part of our job.
How we'd start
Fixed prices, agreed before we start
Decision Diagnostic
£5,000We size the capacity & scheduling opportunity in pounds and give you a 90-day plan.
Build
from £18,000We build the model or tool into your workflow. You own everything.
Analytics Partner
from £3,500We keep it monitored, refreshed and improving.
Other services
Other questions we answer
Data analytics · Pricing & quoting
“Are we leaving margin on the table?”
Data analytics · Forecasting & inventory
“Why are we out of stock and overstocked at the same time?”
AI integration · Workflow automation
“Can we stop retyping the same information?”
Decision modelling · Risk & decision modelling
“What happens to our margin if steel, energy or the dollar moves?”
Find out where your capacity is going
Book a 30-minute call. Bring one decision you'd like to make better, and we'll tell you how we'd size it.