Bottleneck and Finite Resources

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Background

SCM has a great variety of resources which can be used to constrain the supply chain and result in a feasible plan. However, the constraint options change depending upon the resource type. In this screen shot below we have a Production Line resource which is used for PP/DS.

Bottleneck Resources

Bottleneck and Finite Resources

This resource can be  declared as finite by selecting the Finite Scheduling checkbox. Checking a resource as a Bottleneck tells the system that the resource in question is the maximum capacity or throughput of the entire process (that is the sequence of all operations) for a product. In PP/DS and production planning generally, the operations are within a single facility. In SNP and supply planning, the sequence of operations may be transportation lanes between facilities, combined with any operations that are performed within the facility (pick, pack, etc..)

What is Necessary to Perform Effective Finite Planning

First, it is only necessary to constrain on a single resource, among a series of predecessor and successor resources. Second, not all resources in the resource chain need to be set to finite. That is because a single resource can be set as the bottleneck resource. Certainly, all resources can be set to finite, (or constrained), but it takes more effort to do this and does not yield advantages because the max throughput is effectively set with a single bottleneck resource. However, whether or not a resource is set as infinite or finite, it must still have a time associated with it.

Critical Products

Products produced on bottleneck resources are called critical. There are two critical resource types generally:

  1. Those produced on a bottleneck resource
  2. Those with long lead times

The bottleneck setting for a resource is on the tab within the resource transaction. It is a simple dialog box.

Critical projects, such as products with long replenishment times or those with constraints are produced at bottleneck resources, which simply means setting the resource to a bottleneck.

To read more about resources in SCM generally see this post.

http://www.scmfocus.com/sapplanning/2008/09/14/resources/