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How to put more than to contraints on a task in MS proj

7 replies [Last post]
Wed, 2005-10-26 11:55
manulal inasu
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Hi,

I am working in a ship repair project and the plan has got a lot of constraints. Any idea how to put more than two contraints on a task?

to explain my question, suppose i have a task "a" with 4 days duration and I have to put both "start no earlier than" and "finish no later than" constraints on this task.

I dont know whether its possible or not in MS Project. So I have developed a planning program in Excel in which it is possible. But it is too slow as the size is around 120 MB and lot of formulae involved. So i thought its better to find out a easier method in MS Project itself.

Can anybody help me please?
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Replies

Thu, 2012-08-16 15:13
#1
Michael Slawinski
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Establishing 2 relationships between tasks:

from the book MS Project 2007, 99 tricks and Traps, by Eastwood Harris

 

you need to insert a milestone in the loop to assign 2 constraints between tasks in MSP

 

ID Duration Predecessors Successors
1 10d   3SS;2
2 0d 1 3FF
3 5d 1SS; 2FF  
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Fri, 2005-10-28 04:10
#2
manulal inasu
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Dear Larry, sukumaran,alex and zhang,

Thank you all for your replies, I tried start and finish milestones and it worked exactly as I wanted. Thank you guys.

I know very well that applying constraints is not at all good in a schedule because of many reasons. But the present project I am working on is a special case. I think you people will be astonished to know that the ship of which we are doing the refit will go to water 4 times during the period of refit and 4 different sub projects are to be included in the master plan which are linked to each other in a very complex manner and at the same time executed by diffeerent agencies and one of them being the Royal navy of Oman. So constraints are a must.

What you guys suggested saved me a lot of time, I spent a lot of hours in excel programming to meet these requirements, any way it was a nice experience.
Thank you to all once again.

One more thing I wanted to tell you, when I did resource levelling in MS project it took more time than the program I created in excel and the result was the same.

Manu.
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Thu, 2005-10-27 06:04
#3
Larry Blankenship
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It’s not recommended, but what you might do is put a milestone at the end of the task with a must finish on constraint and must start on constraint on the task itself. Alternately, if you make the task type Fixed Duration, and then put a must start on constraint on it, that would have the same effect. However, be prepared to add resources if your schedule starts to slip.

As others have said, it’s probably not a good idea, as it will cause you no end of grief when you go to update and reschedule the remaining work.

Is there a reason you need to do it this way?

Larry
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Thu, 2005-10-27 01:02
#4
Sukumaran Subaram...
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Manulal,

A. 1st plot the schedule in MSP.
B. 2nd Go to Task Information:
B1. Assign constraint
B2. Enter deadline - A target date indicating when you want a task to be completed. If the deadline date passes and the task is not completed, project displays an indicator.

If you want to assign more than 2 constraints in MSP, I don’t think so you can do it, never come across such a situation. Suggest you create start and finish milestones and link the activity bar to milestones as a controlling factor.

Also before update the schedule save it as a baseline for your comparison between current and target.

Cheers!!!
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Wed, 2005-10-26 23:34
#5
Alex Wong
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echoooo.....
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Wed, 2005-10-26 23:21
#6
Zhang Haixiang
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creat some dummy tasks with constraint and link to the task
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Wed, 2005-10-26 19:45
#7
Alex Wong
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Hi manulal

My question is how you build your schedule??

Constraints should be use in a very restricted condition in a CPM model.

Anyway to answer your question: If you want to have various condition (what you refer to constraints) to drive the activity - what you can do is to have varisoul predecessors activities and linked to the activity. that way the activity will be dependent on the predecessor conditions.

HTH - But I still insist use as little as possible on constraints

Good Luck

ALex
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