Equipment Planning

Equipment planning can be defined as making or arranging equipment for executing a project or program before the work being planned is underway. It goes beyond just deciding what work will be carried out the next day. It involves  drawing up a detailed plan of work cycles well in advance and providing  equipment to meet the requirements of the production desired. 

Developing an operational plan of action is the primary requirement in the process of scheduling any project. The project plan must clearly indicate what is to be achieved and depict the sequence or procedure and the methods to be used. This requires that the entire project work be described as simply as possible. Once the tasks have been identified it is then necessary to consider the equipment requirements for each task in developing the action plan. The process of planning involves decision making of how and in what order. Once that has been decided then the equipment, by class and number, are determined keeping the production rate to be achieved. 

The equipment planning team should have detailed knowledge and experience in the work to be done and the kinds of equipment required to do it. The team must have authority for decision making commensurate with the high level of responsibility the planning of equipment involves. The planners must be skilled in the techniques to be used. 

Here, the critical path method (CPM) of analysis comes handy. Once the network is developed, a time grid network is drawn and on it is marked the equipment required for the various activities. Histograms developed indicate the number and type of equipment and the time period for which required. 

While pluming equipment for a project, the equipment selected should be utilized for 75% of its economic life on the project. There is no need to procure the peak or maximum number of equipment right at the beginning. The work will go on at a slow pace at the start and then pick up momentum. As more and more activities are added on the project the progress on the particular item of work will slow down. Accordingly, less number of equipment are required in the beginning and as the work speeds more equipment of the same kind are added and when the work tempo reduces, the older machines should be discarded or moved to another project in a phased manner.