Lilly Uses VirtECS® STAR
This journal article describes the use of VirtECS as an enhanced capacity management system. In this implementation, VirtECS draws data from SAP. In general, VirtECS can draw data from a variety of sources.
VirtECS® STAR Benefits
VirtECS STAR helps you estimate and manage resource usage by developing intuitive activity-based models. This allows you to plan in units of effort meaningful to you yet provide the roll-up and reporting capability needed to communicate with stakeholders & ERP systems.
Challenge of Capacity Planning
In order to manage resource capacity over the long term, it is important to be able to estimate and analyze resource usage on a monthly or quarterly basis and provide frequent and consistent reports. There is a very basic problem for many capacity planners - they don't estimate or plan work based on the calendar, but based on standard activities that require known resources and last for a certain period. Information on project milestones or official deliverables must be obtained, often from an ERP system, and manual calculations are needed to conform your internal planning numbers to requested calendar periods. A related problem occurs when a deliverable date shifts - forcing you to recalculate all your resource effort over all time periods. At some point this becomes more than you can handle using Microsoft Excel - you need a resource capacity planning tool, one that views activity planning like you do.
When Can You Deliver?
The other critical need for the capacity planner is to be able to respond quickly to the question: "The latest new initiative or project is ready to go - when can your department commit to providing the resources we need?" How do you answer that question, and how do you rearrange ongoing work to make room for the new project? How do you use outsourcing effectively to get everything done on time?
Planning in One System
Compounding these problems is the fact that existing tools or stakeholders don't see the big picture from your perspective. You need a single system in which you can plan project related work, non-project work, and your own departmental activities and R&D. You need a system that interfaces with external data sources, that provides rich reporting and graphing, and that is easy to understand and use - a system like VirtECS STAR.
