Tracking Hardware Qty

[dwolf]

I am setting up an equipment test program in Project 2000 with
technicians, engineers, etc. I also wish to add the quantity of test
pieces required for each test. So far this is straight-forward... The
test pieces are entered as material and the technicians, etc are
entered as work.

The difficulty becomes when I am trying to determine the minimum number
of test pieces I can use to complete the test program. Resource Usage
will keep track of the total test pieces based on no common test pieces
between tests. The right-hand pane insists on distributing the
quantity over time. So a requirement for 5 test pieces on a 5-week
test will show as 1 unit per week. Changing the "Accrue At" to Start
does nothing to solve the problem.

Is there an easy way around this that I am missing? Or do I need to
copy the time-phased data into Excel to sum the quantities up? I can't
use 2-1/3 test units as an answer.

Hopefully someone has an elegant solution....

Thanks,

--dwolf

 

[John]

I am setting up an equipment test program in Project 2000 with
technicians, engineers, etc. I also wish to add the quantity of test
pieces required for each test. So far this is straight-forward... The
test pieces are entered as material and the technicians, etc are
entered as work.

The difficulty becomes when I am trying to determine the minimum number
of test pieces I can use to complete the test program. Resource Usage
will keep track of the total test pieces based on no common test pieces
between tests. The right-hand pane insists on distributing the
quantity over time. So a requirement for 5 test pieces on a 5-week
test will show as 1 unit per week. Changing the "Accrue At" to Start
does nothing to solve the problem.

Is there an easy way around this that I am missing? Or do I need to
copy the time-phased data into Excel to sum the quantities up? I can't
use 2-1/3 test units as an answer.

Hopefully someone has an elegant solution....

Thanks,

--dwolf

Dwolf,
Aggravating isn't it? Actually the "Accrue At" field applies to costs
not to the assignment. For example, let's say you have 1 piece of test
equipment needed for a 5 day task. If it is set as a material resource
with a Cost/Use of $100 and an Accrue At of "start", the Resource Usage
view will show a $100 cost on day 1 with the usage spread at 0.2 over
the 5 day period. That's useful for cost tracking but not very useful
for equipment tracking.

Unfortunately, Project does not allow an entry for Max/Units for
material resources. I guess the idea is that with regard to material, it
takes what it takes, so material will never be overallocated. In your
case however, the number of test pieces is limited and they are subject
to "overallocation".

So what do you do? If your end goal is simply to keep track of the
number of test pieces required, there are a couple of choices. One is to
copy the Work field from the Resource Usage view (not the timephased
data - as you noted, it is not what you want) and paste in Excel. Then
add it up. A second option requires the use of an advanced feature of
Project, namely VBA. Not only can the totals for pieces of test
equipment be written into a spare field but a flag could also be set if
a given piece of test equipment is scheduled for concurrent use on two
or more tasks.

It is possible there are other options that just don't come to mind.
Maybe someone else will check in with their suggestions.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Material resources are things that are consumed during a task or
incorporated into the deliverable. Either way, they're used up by the
project and disappear from the universe of resources as they're used. If
your test pieces are more like equipment and you have just as many at the
end of the task as you had at the start and could use them again if you
wished, they're Work resources, not Material, with a max availability of
100% * # of pieces. Try that and I think it'll resolve your problem.