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I am trying to build and level a resource loaded schedule. A number of the activities require part-time effort, that is to say just a few hours a day over an extended period of time. Unfortunately when I level these activities in P6, it refuses to allow the resource to work this activity with others in parallel This has two effects - 1) my resource is only partially loaded for the duration of that activity (not maxed to 40hrs/week) & 2)other activities become very late becasue they wait for this task to finish. Note : There are no relationship ties between the two activities.
As a further example -- i i have 2 x 40 hour activities, each with a 10 day duration, i would like both activities to complete within the 10 days (80 hrs working 40 hours/week). Instead it takes 20 days (80 hrs only working 20 hours per week)
I am hoping this is a setting that i can change. It will also assure that my resource curve is at maximum capacity for the duration of the work.
Thanks in advance.
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Hi,
I faced a similar issue, many parallel activities and resource will be working on each of them only part time.
Tried several methods in P6, but after failing.
Made resource levelling offline and then imported it back to schedule as there were more than 4k activities so manually adjusting them was not possible with time limitations.
Regards,
Hi,
I faced a similar issue, many parallel activities and resource will be working on each of them only part time.
Tried several methods in P6, but after failing.
Made resource levelling offline and then imported it back to schedule as there were more than 4k activities so manually adjusting them was not possible with time limitations.
Regards,
How do you manage crane assignments?
Planning for 2 tower cranes in a concrete building requires the resources to be shared among several activities. In the following example concrete pouring on section B is to be done continuously using the two cranes as not a single crane can reach all section B.
Best Regards,
Rafael
Update =
After significant experimentation with this, we have determined it is in fact not possible to automate the leveling of multiple partial utilization tasks. It is only possible to do so manually, with constant manipulation.
Our end result is that we assume everything is full eight hours a day, which shows compressed durations in series, but ultimately it is a limitation of P6, so it is what it is...
Hope this helps someone out there...
Duplicate...
Billy,
Maybe it is not a global setting, maybe it is a default setting you can override per activity, remember I am no longer a P6 user and it has evolved for good or bad. In the software I use a sort of equivalent is controlled at the individual activity settings level, I would not be surprised if you can do it at the activity level with P6.
I suggest selecting the activity and look under General Tab, based on an image I just saw on the Web.
My excuses for using the software I use to show what you are asking makes perfect sense.
Good luck
Rafael and others -- thank you for the comments.
Tipped off by your recommendation I have experimented with the duration type settings. Previously I was set to "fixed units & duration". Changing to "fixed units" has resolved the issue, allowing the 10 day duration in my example below to expand to an 11 day duration and thus allowing parallel tasks.
This unfortunately introduces the drawback that task durations may also compress (ie my 10 day/40 hour task can become a 5day/40 hour task) but this is a lesser inconvenience for my application.
Thanks again.
Images lost.
Hi Billy
Your findings of resource levelling, as described, are correct. P6 is not considering the backward pass during resource levelling. I teach my peoples to tailor the resource availably under, > enterprise> resources to suit.
Regards
Johannes
Billy,
"I created two independent activities, each 40 hours long, with a duration of 10 days. I created a resource with a max availability of 8h/day"
The above statement will mean that you set your maximum available units as 8hr/day, you need to input 16hr/day as max unit / time.
Billy,
Now you made it loud and clear. Needless to say I always found P6 resource leveling overly convoluted and not powerful/functionally enough. I believe the issue might be on the activity duration type.
It looks like when you changed budget units the units per time changed like if you are using Fixed Units. I suggest trying with Fixed Units/Time brfore changing budgeted units to 41.
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17266_01/p6help/help/en/helpmain.htm?toc.htm?6631.htm
The following link may be useful for downloading P6 documentation for most/all versions.
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/pt/articles/datawarehouse/primaverappm-098696.html
You can view each library locally in your browser after you download the files and click on file named index.
Godd luck
To answer some comments. -- there is no relationship between the two activities, and i do have a max duration of 8hrs/day. To help illustrate, I set up a minature simplistic demo as follows:
I created two independent activities, each 40 hours long, with a duration of 10 days. I created a resource with a max availability of 8h/day. (I have 80 hours of work, to be complete in 10 days, and a resource that can complete 8 hours per day, so everything should be good). I run and level the schedule and it appropriately runs the two activities in parallel, completing both within the 10 days. This is in line with my expectations.
However, The issue arises if I set the budgeted units for one of the activities to 41 hours leaving the other at 40 hours. (note: the only change i have made is to change the budgeted units from 40 to 41 on one task). When i run and level this scenario, I would expect it to apply 20 hours per week for two weeks to each activity (for a total of 40), with the additional hour spilling over to an 11th working day. (40 hours in week 1, 40 hours in week 2, 1 hour in week 3). What the software gives me instead is that the activities now become in series and resultantly the resource is only 50% loaded. (20 hours in week 1, 20 hours in week 2, 20 hours in week 3, 20 hours in week 4, 1 hour in week 5). This is baffling to me, and I am hoping that it is a setting.
Hope this provides additional clarity, and i appreciate your racking your brains against this.
Enclosed please find a figure depicting partial workloads. As per your requirements there are no links among the activities, partial workload leveling doers not require activities to be linked. These phases represent common scenarios for modeling workloads, something very basic the cheapest software should be able to tackle correctly. More advanced workloads assignments might require more advanced software than the one you are using, but these two basic scenarios you should be able to model and get feasible results.
Be aware of some possible calendar traps in P6, avoid Global settings if not a global rule.
http://www.primaverascheduling.com/calendar-issues-in-primavera-p6/
You say that you have 2 x 40 hour activities, each with a 10 day duration. If the relationship here is a FS then the dates would determine that the overall duration for both of these activities is 20 days.
if you would like both activities to complete within the 10 days (80 hrs working 40 hours/week) the you would have to change the relationship to work in parallel and change the relationship to SS.
I think you might have to manually level your schedule as described above.
Hi,
You need to set the Max Units / Time in the Resource Details under Units & Prices in order for the Resource levelling to Function as Required. Check as well the Effective Date.
Hope it will help.
You said some resources to be working partial time but not if during the same shift or if on a different shift so I am not sure partial workloads will do it. If the work hours are during the the same shift then partial workloads should do it, if at different shift then it gets complicated. The statement "over an extended period" is not clear to me, not sure if you mean overtime as an extension of the workday or if something else.
Partial workloads is very useful for some resources such as a crane that will work several minutes/hours per day on multiple activities and you want to level its use so no more activities than what it can handle are scheduled for the same day.
Look at units/time field, do not confuse it with max-units/time as they are different fields. As far as I recall max-units/time sets the available resource quantity while units/time sets how many hours[or%]/day the resource will be assigned.
You setup the defaults somewhere else but modify it at the assignment level. Also if % or h/d will be used can be set as a default but maybe you can make the exception if when writing 4 h/d will automatically be added but if you write 50% maybe it will change units.
Try a few scenarios with a simple schedule such as a 4 activity schedules, not linked, all 1 week duration, same 8 hours/day calendar, same resource with a max-unit-time=1. For scenario 1 all resources at 8h/day, for scenario 2 all at 4/day. Scenario 1 after leveling shall take 4 weeks while scenario two shall take 2 weeks.
Be patient with my instructions as I no longer use P6. I got the images from the Web. I do this with my software on everyday basis, obviously there are a few differences but essentially should work the same.
I recall that there is a possibility P6 algorithm might be flawed, the flaw probably is born from how you load resources in P6, instead of using quantity you load hours/day or labor units.
I believe P6 partial assignments could allow impossible resource leveling such as: with a maximum of 2 Resources A, allocate 2 resources A 60% to Activity 1 for 1 day and 1 Resource A 60% to Activity 2 for 1 day, the activities not linked, after resource leveling it would yield a schedule duration of 1 day which is impossible. I do not have P6 but you can try it yourself. One single flawed example would be enough to make it unreliable.
Good luck
This is not a isolated incident, i will have hundreds of activities for which this is the scenario. Some as dramatic as just 3 hours a week for the next three years. I am hoping not to have to control this on a case by case basis.
I also do not quite understand how the calender should affect this, and would i need seperate calenders for each of my several hundred resources?
create a seperate resource calendar for this resource and assign the resource for this activity to it
Email: PPadmin@planningplanet.com
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