Answered! What are some examples of capacity planning at a university? What are good and poor practices?…

Capacity planning is ultimately the process of forecasting production requirements by utilization historical data to mitigate time and expense. Capacity planning is based on the firms needs and varies from machine hours or labor hours to physical or monetary units. The selection is dependent on the constraining resources and the firm’s needs to provide goods to the consumer.

Capacity planning can be overcapacity and undercapacity.

Overcapacity typically occurs when a university builds a new business school building. This is because we would not want to construct the building to provide just enough offices for the current level of faculty. We would build extra offices to prepare for an increase in faculty in the future.

Undercapacity occurs at universities when they have to keep increasing the class sizes since they do not have either enough faculty or classrooms to support the current number of students.

A university can use the capacity planning to increase the number of students attending by developing an online degree programs to reach students who don’t have the time or ability to attend a traditional class room.

Consider higher education’s strategy in preparing for a doubling of the state’s college-bound population in the next decade. An established university, guaranteed applicants even in lean years, may follow a capacity lag strategy. A young university might lead capacity expansion in hopes of capturing those students not admitted to the more established universities.

Good Practices:-

Streamline Resource Demand Planning

Optimize Resource Allocation

Real-time view of resource utilization levels

Drive team collaboration