What is a work center? Is it workshop, team, equipment or personnel?

The concept of work center has been clearly defined in the first edition of APICS dictionary of American Operation Management Association. Considering the specific production area of one or more people and/or machines with similar capabilities, it can be regarded as a unit for the purpose of capacity demand planning and detailed planning. Syn: load center.

Work center is a specific production area composed of people or equipment with the same or similar capabilities, and it is a production unit for capacity demand planning and detailed scheduling. Synonym: load center. There are two difficult points to understand here: first, what does this particular area mean? In fact, this specificity should be determined according to the actual situation of the factory. Because the products produced by the same factory are different, there will be ambiguity in the process of dividing work centers. For example, a factory has two blanking equipment, one is a CNC flame cutting machine and the other is a CNC plasma cutting machine. There is no problem that the factory is divided into a work center when producing carbon steel products. However, if stainless steel products are produced, the two work centers need to be separated. Because stainless steel can't be cut by flame. So from this example, we can see that the work center is not a workshop, a team, equipment or personnel. Just because the organizational form and product characteristics of the factory will be copied with the workshop, team, equipment or personnel. Second, what does it mean to be used for capacity requirements planning and detailed scheduling? Capacity requirement planning is an integral part of closed-loop MRP and will not be explained in detail. For example. If you are a technician and you see a product, it is enough to think about how to do it. Which team, workshop and equipment (common equipment) should this product be made by? You won't. Just say you have that ability. This capability needs to be quantified in the factory. Now, for example, if you are a dispatcher, will you let the welder operate the CNC machine tool when scheduling? These problems have been solved because of the work center. To put it bluntly, the work center reflects the ability. Workshops, teams, people and equipment are all organized or subordinate.