Is there enough capacity to meet expected demand?
In fact there are literally hundreds of questions that can be addressed by an effective planning process. Many of these questions are best posed by people understanding the process and business details. Good answers to these questions can help to continuously improve a process. Planning and scheduling are closely related and are best done using the same or closely related tools. This follows because plans must be able to be implemented in order to be effective. Scheduling determines what is actually implemented in the process, while planning explores what is possible. Plans have little value if they are inaccurate and cannot be implemented because they do not consider important process requirements. As such a state of the art APS system should support both planning and scheduling.
