Resource Scheduling

[snetzky]

I am having a problem with the way Project is scheduling my resources.

Is there a way to force Project to schedule task resources for the same
time period?

My example is this:

I have a fixed duration task where a crew is using a forklift to
perform a job.
I have 6 forklifts available round the clock (600% on the resource
sheet on a 24 hour shift) and a day and a night crew (100% on a 12 hour
shift: 6A-6P or 6P-6A).

On my task, I have two resources: day crew and fork lift, both at 100%
for 4 hours or a total of 8 hours of work.

8 hours work / 2 units = 4 hours duration

However, the @#%$@%@$# application insists on scheduling my two
resources at two different shifts which is not terribly useful.
Do I have to split the forklifts up to a day and night set also? That
seems a gigantic pain to me.

Larry

 

[JulieS]

Hi Larry,

When you assign resources, project schedules their work based upon their
resource calendar. So when you assign the "Day Shift" resource their
calendar schedules the work only between the hours of 6:00 am to 6:00 pm.
But the forklifts calendar allows them to work 24 hours per day.

If you don't wish to split up the forklifts and assign half to the day shift
and half to the night shift base calendar, you can assign the "Day Shift"
base calendar to the task and select scheduling ignores resource calendar.
That will force the forklift on this task to work during the day shift.

Hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie

 

[snetzky]

Problem with ignoring the schedule is that my day shift resource could
end up getting scheduled on an evening shift, which is not acceptable.

What would be nice would be the ability to identify a resource on a
task as the driving resource, which would force all other resources on
the task to follow that resource's schedule.

I'll have to give this some further thought.

Larry

 

[John Sitka]

Make the task fixed work, remove constraint dates.
Apply the correct calendars to each individual resource
then apply the resources. Project is limited in what it can do as far
as bringing multiple resources to bear on a task when it has spare capacity.
That is it can't assign or unassign resources on some rules based assignment method.
You may have to model the reporting resource as a known combination of others.

Operator team1 day shift uses 6 forklifts
Operator team2 night shift uses 6 forklifts

 

[snetzky]

Anybody had any luck with using VBA for this kind of thing?

I think I'm going to have to go the route of assigning 6 forklifts to
night shift and 6 forklifts to day shift and go from there.

oh well.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

You wouldn't split your forklifts but optimally you would still create two
groups. If you have 6 forklifts available 24 hours a day, that means you
have 6 for the day shift and and 6 for the night shift. 6 physical
forklifts gives you 12 "forklift-shifts" tracked similar to human work
man-hours. So the resource sheet would show two resources, ForksDay 600%
and ForksNight 600%, plus your operators, also in two groups themselves for
the same reasons.

 

[snetzky]

That's what I ended up doing, and it worked pretty well.

Thanks,

Larry