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Jennifer,

You are correct in that you must start with yearly workload-based budget, reduce that to monthly and, in turn, to workload work that must be done weekly and daily to sustain the plants productive capacity and asset value. The workload is the annual requirement with respect to different groups such as cost center, work type, lead craft type, etc., that are smoothed in count. The document, Workload-Based Budget Variance and Capacity, at https://analytics4strategy.com/ddassetmgt explains by demonstration how to build your annual budget. It assumes you have skills with working with data. If not the document, Super Tables from Operational Data, explains by demonstration how to work with your data using MS Access.

There is a practicable way to fit the craft capacity on the ultimate week's schedule. Down from workload-based budget, develop representative weekly schedules of smoothed sustaining workload. Thence, use your scheduling software to arrive at the types and numbers of crafts to execute them. By trial and error, you place different headcounts in the craft pools to see if they allow the representative workload to be fully executed each day. Ultimately, you will arrive at the craft capacity the plant needs to sustain its productive capacity and asset value.

I'm currently writing the document to deal with weekly scheduling and execution down from the workload-based budget. However, it will not be available until next week.