How to setup elapsed time with non-working weekends (i.e., UPS, Fed-ex, etc)

[Mike]

Hello,

I'm wondering how to factor in shipping times into my schedule.
Currently I make a resource called UPS and then give it the same
working hours per day as the default set in Tools, Options, Calendar,
with non-working weekends. I noticed that if a day = 8 hours and I
say that UPS works 8 hours during the day, the schedule will show that
UPS finishes its task (i.e, ships and delivers a package) at the end
of a day, instead of the next day. So right now I am setting the
schedule such that shipping a package via UPS overnight requires 1.1
days, 2nd-day requires 2.1 days, etc... (the whole point is to avoid
counting weekends, which elapsed time counts). Is there a
better/cleaner way of handling this?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Mike --

Just a thought, but why don't you add Lag time on the dependency after the
predecessor task to the shipping? For example, you might have two tasks
called Equipment Ordered and Equipment Delivered. The dependency between
the two according to your scenario would be Finish to Start (FS) plus 2 days
Lag time. This would account for shipping time spread over two working
days, and would skip weekend days. This is how I account for delivery time
in a schedule, and just to make sure everyone understands the reason for the
Lag time, I add a note to the predecessor task to document why I set lag
time on the dependency relationship. Hope this helps.