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Hi,
We have a planned shutdown in 2018 and our max amount of resources will be ~50. We will have a day and night shift but there will be a different amount of direct labour per shift. The ratio maybe 30 direct on days and 20 on nights. I will be assuming 9 productive hours per shift. And now for my question. Because I have an uneven amount of labour per shift, will my calendar be 18 hours productive out of 24? Should I be using a lesser productivity during the night?
Thanks
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Shut Down work frequently consists of many short duration activities and multiple shifts. Not only labor resources must be considered but also materials [consumable resources], equipment and spatial resources. Partial workloads can be a challenge under multiple shifts for most software. For Spider Project it is easy.
Non human resources in short supply, such as cranes, tools, etc., should be considered as well. Cranes are frequently shared among several activities working in parallel using partial workloads. It will be interesting to see how MSP and P6 distributes partial workloads on different shifts during the same day with different activities per shift as some might span several shifts while others will not. In addition it might be required different teams to work fixed time, too complicated for requent manual adjustments and perhaps for a single shot.
In shut down works in the case of a large crane you might not want to move the crane until activities on a specific area are finished, this is an issue of spatial resources that cannot be efficiently solved if using regular renewable resources, this becomes a spatial resource issue that cannot be solved if using regular renewable resources. In order to take control of the spatial resource and the renewable resource it might be necessary to double constraint the crane use.
You can try yourself a simple scenario, so simple it consist of a single activity.
Activity 1 500 cm rock excavation
Resource 1 production 10 cm/hr and works Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday 10 hrs/day
Resource 2 production 15 cm/hour and works on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 10 hrs/day
If activity starts on Monday:
Monday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm
Tuesday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm
Wednesday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm
Wednesday =>> Resource 2 will produce 150 cm
Thursday =>> Resource 2 will produce 50 cm in about 3 hours
Activity will take 3 days 3 hours.
If activity starts on Wednesday :
Wednesday =>> Resource 1 will produce 100 cm
Wednesday =>> Resource 2 will produce 150 cm
Thursday =>> Resource 2 will produce 150 cm
Friday =>> Resource 2 will produce 100 cm in about 7 hours
Activity will take 2 days 7 hours.
If your software is not capable of modeling the above, simple shift work on a single activity, then maybe you are using the wrong tool. Every time the activity is delayed, the distribution of work is shifted, when you have many such activities and work on different hour shifts, different days it can become quite complicated. For a single shot you can use manual distribution of work among shifts for anything else distributing work by hand is nuts.
http://youtu.be/1_qqDYbdq3w
Patrick,
I did not try P6 when assigned resources have different calendars.
In Spider Project resources work independently if they belong to different teams assigned to the same activity. If they belong to the same team they work only together. In particular the machine has 24 hours calendar but will work only when its machinist is available.
But if P6 assigns these 20 workers with 2 shifts calendar and 10 workers with one shift calendar independently (analogue of Spider different teams) how activity duration is determined?
In Spider Project it depends on productivity of driving resources and activity volume of work. Both parameters do not exist in Primavera P6. Activity duration depends on the time of its execution (hours in the first and in the second shift) that is not known before scheduling. Activity effort also depends on the number of hours in the first and the second shift.
If to follow your proposal it is hard to get a report on the number of resources that shall work each day. Instead of 50 you suggest to model 30 resource units with 20 working two shifts. It does not mean that all 50 will be required each day, sometimes 42, sometimes 48, sometimes all 50. In your case it will be necessary to get reports on the number of resource that work in each shift and then sum them manually. Possible but complicated.
I do not understand your proposal to use one shift calendar on non-critical activities. Why and what shall be achieved by this?
The same with 50 shifts! Please clarify your proposal.
It is interesting to try resource assignments with different resource calendars in P6. I will do it later.
The challenge is the capability of the software......
The easiest option in most tools that do not manage shifts or variable resource loading well is to select an approach that works
One option is to have a 'two shift' calendar and alocate the constant resource level to that calendar (20) and a 'one shift' calendar working days only with resources 10 allocated. Critical acrtivites are allocated to the 'two shift', non-critical to the 'one shift' With dueation units of hours all you need to do to optimes the work is change calendars on an activity.
A rougher option is to simply schedule in 'days' and allow for 50 shifts of work per day. Sort out the details in the 4 week 'look-ahead'.
for more on resource optimisation (your real need) see: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/Resources_Papers_152.html
In addition if shutdown work activities have short duration the activity duration shall be adjusted as to account that during different shifts you have a different crew with different production rate per hour for the whole crew.
Say it will take for the day crew 5 hours so work might be finished within a single shift but if work started during the second shift then it will take two shifts and different activity duration. If this happens frequently it is better if you use software like Spider that will automatically adjust projected durations, so everyone knows what is coming ahead.
As the amount of activities to be performed on every shift increases and if resources can have several skills the assignment will become exponentially complicated. It is not only about good shift modeling but also about other advanced resource planning calculations that can be easily automated if your planning tool provide for it.
Frank, if you need serious resource planning use Spider Project. In this software you may model working in several shifts with different resource quantity and productivity in different shifts. Besides Spider optimizes resource constrained schedules.
Using Spider you will not have these problems and will model real life work and constraints.
Email: PPadmin@planningplanet.com
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