Work Centers for CAPA
A Work Center is the physical place (or logical grouping) where work happens — a press line, a folder station, a cutting bench. Work Centers already power routings and work orders; the Capacity suite extends them with the parameters needed to compute realistic capacity, model planned and unplanned downtime, and decide which work centers show up in the nightly capacity snapshot.
This page covers the capacity-specific fields on a Work Center. For the rest of the Work Center fields (name, cost rates, location, calendars), see the Work Centers guide.
Where it lives
Work Centers have their own list and creation screen, reached from Equipment → Resources → Work Centers. Viewing requires the standard settings-view permission; editing requires settings-edit — the same permissions the rest of the Work Center page already uses.
The capacity fields
Opening a Work Center's form shows a Capacity Parameters section. These are the inputs the nightly capacity calculation uses to project utilization, completion dates, and overload.
Machine Speed
The work center's rated throughput per hour, in whatever unit makes sense for it (sheets/hour, kg/hour, units/hour). It's used as a sanity check against routing operations, and as a fallback when a specific operation doesn't define its own run time.
- Leave it blank if the work center's output varies too much by product to have one meaningful number.
- Use the nameplate rating — efficiency losses are accounted for separately, through OEE Target below.
Rated Hours / Day
How many hours per day this work center is physically able to run, independent of staffing. A 24-hour press has 24; a bench used one shift has 8. This combines with Shift Pattern to compute how many minutes it has available on the calendar.
Shift Pattern
A standard operating cadence to pick from:
| Pattern | Effective hours/day |
|---|---|
| 1 shift, 5 days/week | 8 |
| 1 shift, 7 days/week | 8 |
| 2 shifts, 5 days/week | 16 |
| 2 shifts, 7 days/week | 16 |
| 3 shifts, 5 days/week | 24 |
| 3 shifts, 7 days/week (continuous) | 24 |
If Rated Hours / Day is a lot higher than the shift pattern would suggest, the form shows a warning — it isn't blocked (you might genuinely run overtime), but it's usually a sign of a data-entry mistake worth double-checking.
OEE Target
Your planning estimate of how much of the calendar time actually converts into output, after typical losses for changeovers, small stops, quality, and minor breakdowns. This is a target you set for planning, not a measured figure — the system doesn't yet compute real OEE from production data.
- Typical range: 60–85% for manual operations, 85–95% for automated equipment.
- Only use 100% if this work center genuinely has no real-world losses — otherwise the capacity calculation will be too optimistic.
Availability
Expected availability after planned downtime — maintenance windows and scheduled outages. This is applied before OEE Target.
- Typical range: 90–95%.
- This is conceptually different from OEE, which captures every kind of loss — set Availability conservatively for work centers with frequent maintenance windows.
Default Setup
The changeover time the capacity calculation assumes when a routing operation doesn't specify its own setup time, and also used as the changeover penalty when the plan switches from one item to another on this work center.
Critical for Capacity Dashboard
A toggle that decides whether this work center is included in the nightly capacity snapshot, the background status rollup from its assets, and the Equipment Hub's capacity-related KPIs (Utilization, OEE, Work Centers at Risk).
A work center left off this toggle still shows up in the Capacity Planner — you can recompute it on demand — it just isn't part of the automatic alerts or dashboard KPIs.
Read-only fields
Once a work center has data, its form also shows:
| Field | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Runtime Status | The worst status among this work center's critical assets — Running, Setup, Idle, Down, Maintenance, or Ready. |
| Current Utilization % | The utilization from the most recent capacity snapshot. |
How capacity is calculated, in plain terms
The available minutes for a period come from Rated Hours / Day (capped by the shift pattern), reduced first by Availability for planned downtime, then by OEE Target for the usual production losses — that gives the effective minutes actually expected to be productive. The demand on the work center is the sum of every routing operation's run time and setup time for the work orders scheduled there. Dividing demand by effective minutes gives the utilization percentage; whatever demand exceeds effective minutes is the overload.
Risk level is bucketed from that utilization:
| Utilization | Risk |
|---|---|
| Under 85% | None |
| 85–99% | Low |
| 100–119% | Medium |
| 120% or more | High |
See Capacity Planner for how material shortages adjust this further.
Example: a paper-packaging plant
| Work center | Speed | Rated hrs | Shift | OEE | Availability | Setup | Critical |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Press Line A (Heidelberg) | 1200 sheets/hr | 24 | 3 shifts, 7 days | 85% | 95% | 30 min | ✅ |
| Folder Station 1 | 800 pcs/hr | 16 | 2 shifts, 5 days | 80% | 92% | 15 min | ✅ |
| Cutting Bench | 400 pcs/hr | 8 | 1 shift, 5 days | 75% | 90% | 10 min | ❌ |
Press Line A is the bottleneck — fast, continuously run, and flagged critical. The cutting bench is left off the critical flag because it doesn't gate the rest of production.
Assigning assets to a work center
A work center is a logical grouping; its assets are the physical machines inside it. Set a machine's Work Center field on the asset itself, and the work center's card on the Equipment Hub status board will show every linked asset together. See Asset Management → Link to a Work Center.
Common problems
A work center doesn't show up in the Capacity Planner. It may be past the page limit on a long list — search by name. Otherwise, check that you have view-capacity permission.
Utilization always shows 0%. No routing operations currently route through this work center.
Utilization jumped after a small change. If you lowered Availability or OEE Target, the same demand now consumes a larger share of a smaller effective-minutes figure. Recompute to see the updated snapshot.
The status chip is blank. No assets are linked to this work center yet — link at least one, mark it critical, and wait for the next background rollup (a few minutes).
"Rated hours significantly exceeds shift pattern" warning. Either the shift pattern is set wrong, or the extra hours are genuine overtime — adjust whichever is inaccurate. This warning never blocks saving.
Related
- Asset Management — link assets to work centers
- Capacity Planner — view computed snapshots
- Runtime Status — how a work center's status rolls up from its assets
- Work Centers — the rest of the Work Center fields