Capacity calculation of a team
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Eric L..
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November 19, 2008 at 6:43 pm #51360
I am handling a team, doing a certain set of tasks.
The team states that they are over worked, however I feel there is oppurtunity for the team to take up more work.
How do I calculate the capacity utilisation of my team.0November 19, 2008 at 7:07 pm #177847Very carefully.
0November 19, 2008 at 7:48 pm #177851Antony,
I am sure you have valid reasons for wanting to arrive at some
calculated figure to determine who may be closer to being “right”.
But obviously there are differences in perspective now between the
team and you. (They may be focused on “load” and you on
productivity, for example.)Before putting too much energy into finding the “right number”,
why not engage in a little problem-solving, 5-Why, etc. You may
find that you quickly can identify inefficiencies or frustrations that
are significant obstacles, and your tasks might be easily
streamlined. At the very least, the shared discovery and
communication should be much more beneficial than a cold,
impersonal calculation that may only serve to support one view or
the other.
Just my opinion.
DLW – BPEX0November 19, 2008 at 9:28 pm #177856
Mike CarnellParticipant@Mike-CarnellInclude @Mike-Carnell in your post and this person will
be notified via email.I will guarantee you that if I felt like I was over worked and someone did some calculation to show me I wasn’t I would immediately be willing to do a lot more.
Actually you probably don’t need to do much. Just make some stuff up and present it to them because it doesn’t matter if you are right or wrong this is just going to irritate them.
The other person was right. Get out from infront of your computer and go find out why they think they are over worked. Here is something you may not have considered – maybe they are right.
Just my opinion.0November 19, 2008 at 9:31 pm #177857Calculating capacity is very easy once you know 2 things: Volume and Productivity.
Here’s a simple equation:
P(roductivity)= V(olume)/TM (Team Member)*H(ours)
The first step is know the maximum hourly productive of the Team Members (TM), (e.g.) if TM 1 has an hrly productivity of 8, TM 2 is 6, and TM 3 is 4 – then (assuming that each TM is equally trained) the hrly productivity rate is 8. Therefore, the Team ought to be able to do 24 tasks an hr. or 192 per day.
To accomodate more volume, you either going to need more TMs, more hours or more productivity.
You’re a self-employed wigget maker and you’re making 8 wiggets a day (1 per hr). Your customer now wants 16 wiggets per day. What are your chioces? You can hire another TM; or you can work 16 hrs; or find a way to increase productivity to 2 an hour – this is where process improvement becomes so important.
0November 20, 2008 at 9:48 am #177889Hi Anthony
You should ideally break your team’s entire activity into unique identifiable activities. Each activity should have a standard delivery/execution time permitted, with a margin for efficiency/learning curve. These standard units then become your unit of measurement.
You will have to be careful to factor in the training, adminstrative activity, lag in delivery etc in the calculation.
Since I do not know the specifics of your task, I cannot provide exact details.
Cheers
Deepak Maheshwari
0November 20, 2008 at 10:04 am #177890
Eric L.Participant@Eric-L.Include @Eric-L. in your post and this person will
be notified via email.Good morning Anthony,
I asked a few of my Green Belts to run similar type of assessment. The first step would be to seat with your team and list all the different tasks they are currently handling. Part of their scope AND outside their scope or what you believe they don’t do. the next step would be to map the process of your team with them and identify the waste activities or process loop their are facing each day. By removing – with their help and buying in – these frustating process steps or rework they experience, I beleive you will gain definitively their support. You will show them you want to help them. You should highlight to concept of value to the customer and value to the business aswell to introduce the second step of your project which would be to integrate the new activities you want them to do. However, by process mapping the additional process, you might find with their help commonality, or identify a more rational way to work out the two processes together.
If you have a real requirement to put some metrics in place, I would suggest to size the waste you can remove first and assess if the new activities will fit within the opportunity you will identify with your team.
I hope the above will help you. Let us know how you are getting on with your project.
Eric0November 20, 2008 at 1:49 pm #177895Hi,
To start with, you need to ascertain the following first:
1. Target units of work based on their compensation.
2. Target Quality Standards to be maintained if any, and
3. Target cycle time if any.
Whatever the team’s production is, you can always compare the actual work done against their targets.
Lets take an example. Adam has been give a target of producting 100 units of work per an 8 hour shift where 2% of rejection is allowed.
To put it more clearly, Adam has to produce 98 units of defect-free work consuming an average time of 4.2 minutes per unit (considering two 15 min breaks and 30 min lunch break)
Suppose if he has produced 90 units of defect free work, then his capacity utilization is 90% (100/90).
Please let me know if you want it more clearly.0November 20, 2008 at 3:35 pm #177899
RCannonParticipant@RCannonInclude @RCannon in your post and this person will
be notified via email.Why do you think the team’s capacity is underutilized? Have you observed the team being consistently unproductive? Are they consistently ahead of schedule? Is the problem one driven by prioritization of tasks?
When it comes to people three factors should be assessed to determine their ability: 1) Knowledge (of task), 2) Skill Level (regarding task, 3) Experience (doing task). I don’t know if these attributes are easily quantified for the purpose of setting a productivity goal.
Whatever you do don’t present them with a cold calculation in order to generate an AH-HA moment. As others have said here, you are liable to tick them off.0November 20, 2008 at 3:40 pm #177901We did a similar calcuation in order to bid a job. It was determined that the Engineer could do 1 heat map ( for a wireless access point placement) in 22 minutes. The person who did this did not take into account the time identify the store to be completed, pulling down the file from a respository, reviewing the file, then placing the completed map into a respository and recording the completion with details on a spread sheet. In addition, meetings, break time, lunch time etc was not calculated into the overall equation
As a result the time to do this with the development of the map was more like 35-40 minutes – thus, the team was not as productive and our hours charged much higher than anticipated. We will be reviewing this to make sure we are adding in all the time that must be accounted for not just the actual item the engineer is charged with producing.
So if you have extraneous tasks that your people are responsible to do – like attend meetings and update reports – you need to make those allowances also.0November 20, 2008 at 5:21 pm #177915Hi,
Of all the replies I think, yours made a lot more sense, cause it talks about involving the teams view; rather than arriving at a cold number. I have already tlaked to my BB to see if we can do a VSM & do a 5 why 7 way work out.
Thank you for your help.0November 20, 2008 at 5:27 pm #177916Hello Eric,
I am planning to do a VSM for the team, to identify the wastes and demark the inscope & outscope of the process. I also have a spread sheet that manually lists down activities, time taken, # of FTEs & time required for the team to process the days load. It eventually tells me how many hours of work does each agent have.
If I had to share the spread sheet with you, so that you can see if it makes sense how do I do it. Is there an email ID or something that I can use.
Thank you for your view.0November 20, 2008 at 5:57 pm #177919Ideally not “…for the team…” but WITH them, right?
0November 21, 2008 at 3:24 pm #177983I’ve been in similar situations, sometimes as the person who thinks that more could be done, and sometimes as the person trying to convince more senior management that they’re out of touch with the workload and day to day operations.It seems to me that there are two likely drivers for your concern over productivity. One would be more senior management expectations or requirements, possibly with a desire to keep your jobs. Another may be a general observation that people aren’t working hard enough (too much time around the water cooler, as it were).In both cases, the solution is essentially the same. Work with the team to document the current process and motivate them to find ways to improve effectiveness and efficiency. The usual Six Sigma and Lean tools will help you. Your goal should be to increase the throughput of the work product, and simple solutions that the team members themselves can control and use will prove highly effective. Look for ways that make the work load visible and improve flow, such as Kanban boards, 5S and “spaghetti” diagrams. Just standardizing the work, if it is not already standardized, can net you a ten-time improvement in efficiency.If this is being driven by external factors, such as management expectations, then you will need to spend extra effort in managing those expectations. You’ll need to show them that there is a disconnect in perception between them and the line workers, and you will need to keep them apprised of both your approach to solving the problem as well as what you learn, so that you adjust their perceptions. The good news, for you, is that external factors make it easy to get buy-in from the team members and to ensure that they see you as being on their side.If this is being driven internally, then you will need to look to your own motivational and leadership skills to ensure that you achieve buy-in from the team members and do not develop a reputation as an uncaring or disconnected boss, as such a reputation will result in team member actions that undermine your goal (work slowdowns, padding estimates, “malicious compliance”). You should still look to “manage up” effectively so that your team’s improvements are visible to, and rewarded by, more senior management.Good luck.
0November 21, 2008 at 4:56 pm #177988Analyze the tasks not the team members.
Since you did not state what this team was doing it is difficult to give you an answer.
Standardize the processes to address the normal variation with the team buyin on the standardization.
Once you have standardized processes you can determine the process capability.0November 22, 2008 at 3:01 pm #178010Hi Pam,
I think you can do the following, if have not done so far
Step 1. Ascertain how many maps need to be done by an engineer in a month to make the business profitable depending upon the individual’s CTC. You can further divide this figure by the number of working days in a month. So you arrive at the actual number of maps one needs to do per day to make the service of the personnell profitable.
Step 2. Ascertain the average time spent in doing the non-value adding routine for each map. i.e., the time identify the store to be completed, pulling down the file from a respository, reviewing the file, then placing the completed map into a respository and recording the completion with details on a spread sheet. May be you can do a time and motion study. Also you can fix the duration of the meetings etc in a day and club it with the non-value adding time spent in a day.
Step 3: After the above 2 steps you will know how many maps need to be done in how much time in a day to make the business profitable, and also time to be spent on each map. If step 3 is giving any practical, feasible result, then fine. Else I think you need to rethink on the processing time of each map.
Please me know you views on this.
Regards,
Srikanth0November 24, 2008 at 10:06 am #178028
Eric L.Participant@Eric-L.Include @Eric-L. in your post and this person will
be notified via email.Good morning Anthony,
Sure. I would be more than happy to have a look at your deliverables and give you feedback as far much as I can.
I am looking forward to hear about you.
Eric
PS : you can use my personal email I enclose in the post.
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