MSP2007std. How to workspace, offices etc

[adidistyle]

How do I model Work Resources that are required but do not contribute to the
actual effort of a project?

We are a small manufacturing business, and our factory is divided into 8
workspaces. Depending on the Physical size of the task, all or part of a
workspace is required. In addition to Labour resources, I also need to ensure
that there is no double booking (allocation >100%) on these workspaces, as
that creates a bottleneck.

I think that the workspace is most like a Work resource, rather than a Cost
or Material. I am not concerned with the cost, only availability. I will also
not be reporting on the Workspace's "effort". I need to ensure that people
have somewhere to work!

I have scanned this forum and MSP help. "Step by Step MSP2007" book has this
situation as an example but does not provide a solution.... just quietly
ignores what seems like a major shortcoming of MSP.

At the moment the best I have been able to think of is to set the Resource
Calendar work hours to 1min per day, then allocate the resource to the job.
If an entire workspace is required allocation is 100%, if half 50% etc. This
shows me any day-by-day over-allocation and makes minimal contribution to the
task (7 minutes per week max).

Am I missing something? Am I overcomplicating this? Is there a better way?

All comments/advise welcome.

Thanks,
Adam

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

While your solution is not bad at all, I cansee two alternatives.

A customer of mine, who does not use cost in Euros, uses 1/0 unit costs and
then looks at cost to see only the work of the true Work resources;

Another solution is to use the work as such but to use the grouping feature
to distinguish the "true" work resources' effort.

Hope this helps,


--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf

 

[adidistyle]

Hi Jan,

Thanks for your reply. I have had to de-prioritise this issue for the
moment, however I have flagged it for follow up. As I am still pretty new to
MSP I am having trouble understanding the lingo, but will do some more
reading. If I cannot figure out how to do what you suggest I will ask for
more information.

Thanks again, Adam.