Scheduling one event to occur first thing in the morning next day

[Kevin]

The easiest way to explain my conundrum may be to give an example, let
me know if you know how I can do this!

Joe finishes building a sign, which has 20 or so tasks attached to it.
Joe's last task is to load the sign onto a trailer, and Jamie will
install it the next morning. Using the lag feature in project, it
seems that the trailer will sit until 1 full day after Joe loads the
trailer, irregardless of time. Is there a way to specify a "next day"
scenario? Using the "next day" macro yielded a next day result on all
tasks; can you run a macro on one task, or is there an easier way to do
this?

thanks,
Kevin

 

[Chachi]

Kevin,

Have you tried entering .5d for your lag time? I just did a simple test and
it seemed to work out.

 

[John]

Kevin,

Have you tried entering .5d for your lag time? I just did a simple test and
it seemed to work out.

Chachi,
The problem with a lag of .5d is that it potentially include up to 4
hours of delay on the following day. Let's say the truck is loaded by
5:00 pm on day 1. With the half day lag, the truck won't be "scheduled"
to depart until noon the next day. You won't see this of course unless
the time stamp is included in the Start field.

John
Project MVP

 

[John]

The easiest way to explain my conundrum may be to give an example, let
me know if you know how I can do this!

Joe finishes building a sign, which has 20 or so tasks attached to it.
Joe's last task is to load the sign onto a trailer, and Jamie will
install it the next morning. Using the lag feature in project, it
seems that the trailer will sit until 1 full day after Joe loads the
trailer, irregardless of time. Is there a way to specify a "next day"
scenario? Using the "next day" macro yielded a next day result on all
tasks; can you run a macro on one task, or is there an easier way to do
this?

thanks,
Kevin

Kevin,
I know this question has been addressed in this newsgroup in the past
because I've answered it at least once, probably a year or two ago. You
might try doing a search and looking for messages with "next day" in the
title or something similar. Meanwhile, yes a macro can operate on one, a
select group or all tasks. In this case I would structure a macro to
look at the finish time of the "load trailer" task and then set the
installation to start on the next working day. I'm surprised the "next
day" macro you refer to doesn't do something like that. Where did you
find that macro?

As far as alternate approaches, there probably are other methods and
checking the newsgroup history should flush those out. Whether they are
easier than a macro is open for discussion. I'd go with a macro approach
myself.

John
Project MVP

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Kevin,

Quoting from memory, this is what I once read as the elegant solution.
1. Create a base calendar with working time 1 minute during the night
2. Betweenthe last evening task and the first morning task insert (linked
twice FS that is) a task with a duration of 1 minute and the new base
calendar as a task calendar.
HTH

 

[davegb]

Hi Kevin,

Quoting from memory, this is what I once read as the elegant solution.
1. Create a base calendar with working time 1 minute during the night
2. Betweenthe last evening task and the first morning task insert (linked
twice FS that is) a task with a duration of 1 minute and the new base
calendar as a task calendar.
HTH

Pretty clever! Wouldn't have thought of that in a million years.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi all,

I must humbly admit I had forgotten the exact way, till in a course I gave
recently a student asked exactly the same question... I have tried till it
worked (it indeed is not very intuitive)

 

[Chachi]

OK, I've got to ask a potentially dumb question. Wouldn't it be more
important for the MS project schedule to identify the fact that the truck is
to leave on a certain day and rely on communicattions to indicate what exact
time? It seems to me the power of project is a schedule modeler, not an
exact copy of the schedlule. I can't imagine managing a project to the Nth
detial, uless it is a very small project, as I simply don't have time to do
that. If a PM is not communicating with the team to provide clear direction
to team members no amount of scheduling is going to help.

My $.02

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

It all depends on the project.
Not small or large, but how important is one day more or less?
And I don't know what's bad about having an exact copy of the schedule - or
does one use one more product for that?

 

[Kevin]

Hi Chachi et. al,

my issue lies not in modelling down to the nth detail, but rather in
the fact that our shop may potentially be working on 30 different signs
on a given day. The product we push out is date critical, so a day
does matter to us. Project as a schedule modeller for us has potential
to be great, however in order to maintain the level of production that
we currently have, having the appearance of an unavailable truck and
trailer until noon pushes other jobs back further, in a way creating a
"worst case" scenario; However with 30 projects, each on a 2 week
turnaround, you can see how a half day of unintended lag in each can
wreak havok on our scheduling. Let me break our business down to simple
procedure and see if this helps:

A job starts when we recieve a deposit.
Shop Drawings are created (say by 2 pm)
Shop Drawings are approved by Client (event finishes at 2 pm next day)
Permits are procured (next morning- a 1 day lag runs this out to 2 pm
next day)
stock is checked and ordered
stock is delivered (next day, AM)
Sign is fabricated
graphics are cut and applied
sign is loaded on trailer
Sign is installed (truck leaves next AM)

with 3 potential half day delays, modelling a schedule could
potentially run way longer than actual, making Project non-functional
as a schedule modeller for us. My goal is, without setting hard dates
(must begin on, must be completed by, etc.) eliminate the half day
lags. As well, if Permitting is say a 4 hour process and it starts at
2 pm, it will run it into the next day, breaking it up into a split
event, which isn't realistic.