MKT B370

Strategic capacity planning and facility design

Overview

In this unit, we discuss the topic of strategic capacity planning and facility design. The unit has three sections. In the first section, we discuss strategic capacity planning, which is concerned with how to determine the overall capacity level of capital intensive resources - facilities, equipment, and overall labour force size - that best supports the company's long-range competitive strategy. In the second section, we turn to facility location decision, which is concerned with where a manufacturing plant or service facility should be located. In the third section, we discuss operations layout strategies, which are concerned with the decisions on the placement of departments, workgroups within the departments,...