4. Bring your capacity management to life throughout the project and make arbitrage needs visible

This applies not only to product development, but also to capacity planning: the earlier a change is made, the less costly it generally is. For example, training courses planned a year in advance can be scheduled to coincide with off-peak periods, by arranging vacations, whereas training courses requested at the last minute, during a busy period, may require a lot of overtime, or worse, production stoppages.

It is therefore important that all the parameters mentioned in this sheet (from the "basics" such as unit times and dimension change times to more complex parameters such as waste rates, storage constraints or operator training) are shared with the players concerned as often as possible – and that these players take them into account in their planning!

Similarly, it's common, if not inevitable, for capacity-related changes to affect...