Adaptive Planning Tools
for everyday use
In a job shop, a job is splitted into tasks, which are executed in sequence on different work centers / machines, according to the requirements of the task.
A job shop schedule or planning board, specifies a roster for each work center/machine, upon which the tasks are booked.
Multi Project Planner is such a planning board, where the rows represent work teams and the bars represent project activities.
The Gantt charts of the projects are so to say superimposed unto the planning board according to resource requirements and availability.
This solution immediately reveals resource conflicts.
The difference between representing multiple projects in a traditional project planning tool and Multi Project Planner's way of presenting multiple project is shown in the picture below.
The plan contains four projects distinguished by their color. In the traditional way of presenting multiple projects the projects have to be stacked atop each other.
The rows in the gantt chart initially represent activities.
After the transformation the rows represent the schedules of the work teams upon which the activities are booked according to the resource requirements of the activities and the competencies offered by the work teams.
Scheduling
Scheduling a new project in a plan that looks like a bewildering mess can be a complicated affair and very error prone.
Multi Project Planner offers a feature called a 'Template Project'. A template project is a schedule for a single project, where the activities can be defined without taking resource conflicts into considerations. The template project is scheduled by dragging the template onto the plan. During this process Multi Project Planner will schedule the activities according to free space and resource requirements while trying to minimize project lead time and maximize resource utilization.
This divide and conquer strategy will avoid much of the double trouble inherited in multi project scheduling.
The picture below illustrates a template project. The red arrows are the critical path.
See a demonstration of a template project.
Handling changes
Handling a resource conflict tends to create a domino effect, that ripples along the schedule and in worst cases even gets amplified, as the handling proceeds along the schedule.
Multi Project Planner offers a feature called a 'Hot Potato', which represents a resource conflict. The hot potato enables you to postpone handling the resource conflict, thereby preventing the domino effect to escalate.
When handling the hot potato becomes due, the circumstances may have changed, in which case unnecessary rescheduling have been avoided.
The picture below illustrates a hot potato.
See a demonstration of the hot potato facility.