Let’s Challenge SPIDER

Carlos, hide your last name, dont’t give any clue to Vladimir.

Congratulations Vladimir for reaching 200 posts in this topic!! It is a great adventure to be learning Spider.



For this 200 post here’s a little trivia:



What’s the spanish word for "Spider" ?



The answer may amaze you.



C. Arana

Vladimir,



I tried Portfolio Management within the demo as per your suggestion; you should have not mentioned it. Now that I found how easy Portfolio Management can be as compared to P6 I am starting to like the functionality.



Most of my clients will prefer the desktop version because of price, 1/3rd that of P3 and P6, with 99% of all the goodies and not a stripped down to a G-string version as Primavera Contractor is. Most want everyone in the management team to have their own license, and there are a few that really need the Portfolio Management functionality, and being so easy why not.



Best regards,

Rafael

To assign priorities, select the activity/phase by double clicking on the line as to show the activity/phase properties dialog box there on the Data/Initial Data tab you can enter the priority or you can enter the data into any one of the two the Gantt Chart column panes, after you make the priority column to show, and there you can assign activity/phase priority.



It will be interesting to know how the results vary depending on the leveling method selected, optimization might favor the owner. We are lagging with these methods, here Vladimir can tell us about the Russian experience.



Also would like to know if the resource critical float and path help others to understand resource availability can be critical. It is kind of ironic how our definition of float cannot be correctly shown under limited resources in most of our specified software (other than Spider).



Best regards,

Rafael

I GOT A RESOURCE LOADED SCHEDULE!



I made a schedule for the realization of a productivity claim, involving me and another analyst.



CTRL+F9 gives the duration of the claim works, without adding any relationship =D. But it gets the final evaluation in the beggining and the information collecting last ... How do I assign priorities?

Vladimir,



1. What is the purpose of the option for selecting one of your many WBS as the Main WBS?

2. Is this for Project portfolios, to tell the software which to use?

3. If for Project Portfolios can I change the WBS of a particular project to another WBS by changing the particular job Main WBS?

4. What about other users on the network can they select their own WBS per job on a Portfolio?

5. How many projects you can have on a single portfolio?



Keep in mind the demo does not have the Portfolios/Enterprise functionalities; I have no way of exploring these.



I would appreciate if you can e-mail me a screen capture of a screen showing a multiple jobs Activity GANTT .



Best regards,

Rafael

Rafael,

Did Barack Obama get wet? And what about the Mavericks on Sunday? Barea is goooood!

Can you try to solve LA01 and LA16 by Spider? These are very easy to solve (easy to get the optimal schedules). Vladimir says: “Easy problems are not attractive.” So he will not solve easy problems. I think they could be important for us. If Spider finds the optimal schedules, or very close to the optimum (< 2% like FT06) then it is fine. However, if it is 3% or more then we have a small problem - to improve the schedule.

Vladimir,

I think Spider could be allowed to calculate schedules for FT10 or LA29 longer and find much better schedule. Why only 1, 2 seconds? As far as I know, the iterative heuristics, metaheuristics, work like this: they find the first schedule fast, in less than one second or so. They save the schedule, and continue in search for a better one. They search hundreds of schedules, until they find a better one, and save it, etc. In this way, they search and keep finding better and better schedules. They keep searching until a stopping criterion is reached. The stopping criterion can be the number of iterations, calculation time, or something else.

Vladimir, why not to allow users to select the calculation time as a stopping criterion? Rafael said: “About resource leveling time I am willing to wait up to an hour if need be, …” In this way on Resource Constrained Scheduling Options form, I could select 10 minutes or 30 minutes calculation time, and let Spider calculate for that time. I should get a much shorter schedule than with only 1, 2 seconds of calculation time. And we know the significant benefits for the company from this much shorter schedule.

In my job shop scheduling software, I do not have the calculation time criterion. I let the scheduling program run and run and search for a better and better schedule. I watch how fast the schedules keep improving. When I see that the rate of improving is slowing down too much, or I get tired waiting, I kill/stop the search for better schedules.

Regards,

George

Carlos,



You can explore in Excel the following formulas, you can figure out how to adapt them to your holidays. About Good Friday you must ask a Maya Indian, they figured out the calendar for moon phases.











Best regards,

Rafael

Thank you Vladimir and Rafael, I’m now making my planning. I must say, it got a smile out of me when I introduced my work hours and Spider calculated the daily hours and the workweek.



I’m wondering if there’s a way to model some holydays of the type: "Third monday of February" (USA President’s day) or "Third monday of March" (Mexico’s President Day).



Now that you mention it Rafael, I wish I coud be in Cancun or Acapulco right now, lying in a Hammock under the palms with my coco and my tekila. But they are some hundred KM from my place, I must do a careful planning. Think of it, since Spider has Hammocks, It now just needs cocos and tekila.



Best regards.

Carlos

Carlos,



I just heard that Spider Project new version is about to be released. It will have conditional formulas to define relationships, unique new functionality above ancient CPM functionality, FS and no lag, also above now antiquated PDM schedules with only SS, SF, FS and FF with lag relationships in precedence schedules and no more.



To me true float and optimal resource allocation available in Spider Project and nowhere else was a checkmate on all the others, at the click of the mouse, no brain needed, but this will be like checkmate on the first move.



As soon as this new functionality is on the demo you should explore it, this is serious stuff.



Best regards,

Rafael

Carlos,



In Spider Project you can import P3e files to Spider Project, this option might work better when importing from P6 to Spider Project converting from P6 to P3 to Spider Project (P3e not equal to P3 similar names different software) .



From Spider Help:



The user can import a project from Primavera P3e SQL database to Spider Project. To perform import:



In the Main window menu select File –> Create Project –> From Primavera Data Base.



In the opened Create project from database dialog box select required Primavera P3e database and press Open. In the opened list of projects (with project codes, version number and name) the user can select required project (for further import) or press Close (to stop import and close database).



Press Import. Selected project will be imported to Spider Project. Code and name of the imported project will appear in the opened Project properties dialog box.



Note that: the user must have database options set for the database from which the project is imported. In order to establish initial connection to Primavera P3e database the user must specify user name privuser and password privuser.



During Primavera P3e project import database fields without counterpart in Spider Project database structure are transferred to user-type fields (see Fields’ list dialog box). These fields can be useful in some cases; e.g. to obtain the same activities order as in Primavera P3e project the user can sort activities in the Activity Gantt by seq_num field.



Best regards,

Rafael

Carlos,



About your question no 1:



In Spider Project you are not limited to a single WBS, you can have as many as you want, and yes you can define any WBS on activity codes, no surprise you are not limited in how many activity codes you can define in case 20 or 30 is not enough.







There is more than meets the eye to this functionality as there is some other powerful functionality regarding the handling of WBS in Spider Project.



About importing activity codes directly from P3, I do expect when you import a P3 file into Spider Project these will be imported.



About your question no 2:



I believe in Spider Project you can set the activity type to productivity and then the duration of the activity will be calculated during scheduling. Initial data for this activity type is its volume and assignments productivity, from this everything will follow.



Explore the above until Vladimir can expand.



How is the weather in Acapulco and Cancun? Here seems like a perfect day for scuba diving. Yes, but Murphy says on the weekend it will rain.



Vladimir,



Seems like our response crossed in the way. Can you expand on Spider Project P3 import, do we get the activity codes imported? The demo does not have the P3 import functionality available.



Best regards,

Rafael

Hi again! I’m coming back from a long period of internet shortage.

Thanks Vladimir for the answer in collaborative work. Last week I mentioned Spider in a talk with my boss when he mentioned they will be updating the P6 licenses this year.

Now, I have been using Spider in my (little) spare time, trying to see if I can get a similar workflow in Spider than the P3’s workflow the managers are used to. The first thing is, Contractual (signed) schedule is grouped and sorted according to P3 activity codes. So, this post’s question #1 is: Given the case, can Spider use P3 activity codes to group and sort the gantt chart?



Question #2: How do I define an activity where a person can write one page per three hours (this includes necessary research), if he has to write 30 pages working 10 hours daily? The day starts at 8:00 AM, then we get one and half hour free at 2:00 PM, to return to the office at 03:30 PM until 7:30 PM where we say Yabadaba-doo and leave the office.

Hi All



What a response!



I am only 12 days into the task and already you have listed one or two of the particular problems.



The main problem however is controlling the "Lead In" tasks where for even a simple Pot Hole infill of 2 days duration there are about 125 taslks that have to be completed in time before the start.



Road Closure permits are only a part of all the consultations and surveys that have to be undertaken by about 8 different agencies before a truck goes out with a bucket of tar and grit and three guys to fill up the hole.



I have estimated that the full programme will exceed 200mb.



This is my first hands on experience of public sector working and it is a big eye opener.



In the real commercial world the same work load would be done with about 30% of the current work force.



Best regards



Mike Testro.

Lucky you, we are not in preventive maintenance, more like in covering potholes. They come out faster than we can cover them.

George,

Because of the rain, bikinis are temporarily out of service. Last year average rain was 40% over yearly average, 12 months of rain my friend, this year seems like another 12 months of even more rain, this is an Island so floodings are not big, water goes to sea very fast.  Tomorrow Barack Obama is coming to Puerto Rico, most probably he will get wet.

About resource leveling time I am willing to wait up to an hour if need be, so there is time to run a few schedule leveling on a day. We are talking about applications for the industry, on special occasions might be willing to wait more time. When we have a job in trouble many times the only way to compress the schedule is not by squeezing the resource leveling algorithm but by changing technology-logic and or preferential-logic, increasing resource availability, adding shifts and the like. Still no doubt efficient resource leveling algorithms are handy, ideally the optimal as they can make a substantial difference. As Vladimir said they can improve the quality of our schedules, with the use of these we can reduce idle time of planned resources.

Spider creates resource dependencies, perhaps this can be used to temporarily lock the schedule so schedule runs for logic without resource leveling can be performed fast, then after all logic modifications the resource dependencies can be released as to run true resource leveling without artificial links that might interfere. This functionality, perhaps unique of Spider, you might be interested to look at.

Agree resource leveling shall be developed by testing, I cannot see other way, in order for the testing not taking much time I believe relatively few activities schedules that create enough confusion to the algorithms shall be enough. Algorithms for our project type schedules as well as algorithms for production type schedules shall be developed and available on a single scheduling software as there is no such thing as the Universal Algorithm that works best for all schedules, to make it harder sometimes schedules combine both types of process. For the moment no such thing exists and even finding best prioritization strategy differs among the different software and even among different schedules within same software.

I am just a regular user that can use the tool as developed by the mathematical minds, I believe resource leveling algorithms can be improved, though not a simple task. I recognize sometimes by random I got some improvements, this is why I am asking for some way to record my settings and results as to make it easier to make some search by some kind of educated trial and error.

I believe Spider schedules and any software shall be compared to the other software, not against itself.

Sorry for not going any further but optimization methods is not my specialty, give me the tools and I will use them, by testing the tool and comparing to other software we will know how good it is.

Regards,

Rafael

Hi Anoon



Have a look here:

http://www.maintenanceworld.com/Articles/worshamw/ispreventive.html



"Preventive maintenance is planned maintenance of plant and equipment that is designed to improve equipment life and avoid any unplanned maintenance activity. PM includes painting, lubrication, cleaning, adjusting, and minor component replacement to extend the life of equipment and facilities. Its purpose is to minimize breakdowns and excessive depreciation." (quotation from this site)



With other words: If e.g. you know that after 100000hours of operation there is a risk, a certain pump will break down, you’ll change it after 100000 hours to prevent a plant or a refinery from breakdown or you’ll exchange engine oil of a car on a regular basis.



Best regards

Dieter

Vladimir,



"Preventive Maintenance" - I’m also not sure if there is a standard definition, I just happen to step on it and made me believe that this type of works exist. How to define it?



Maybe others have any ideas?

Hi Vladimir,



If I may ask, how do you define the sequence of works like preventive or predictive maintenance (not a routine maintenance)?



cheers

Mike and Vladimir



Are you considering optimizing the movement from job to job by minimizing distance? Let say crew is at grid location no C20 so it first will look for jobs at location C20, if not available then at locations B19, B20, B21, C19, C21, D19, D20, D21?



Going from grid location C20 to grid location W12 when a job at C20 is ready to start is not optimal.



Best regards,

Rafael

Hi Rafael - Hi Vladimir



I have just got a real planning job putting together a roll out programme for all the road maintanance operations for Suffolk County Council for the next three years.



It will probably reach about 130,000 activities on 600 projects per year.



I am using PowerProject enterprise and I am also using the resource levelling software.



They only have 2 road paving machines that need to be kept occupied throughout the paving season so I let powerproject do it for me.



If you are interested I will keep you informed on progress.



Best regards



Mike Testro

Vladimir,



The interface as of now I love it, is uncluttered and the toolbars icons get you directly to over 90% of your navigation, the 10% I prefer it to be at the menu bar. If you add all menu items to the vertical and horizontal toolbars then the toolbars will be cluttered and will slow down your 90% navigation needs, will kill its purpose.



The idea of drop down icons is for in case you need to add some icons to the toolbars this is a possibility to consider, please keep it close to what it is now, don’t over do it.



About an interface to switch on and off functionalities I would only switch off risks and trends. We have pending a discussion about this but now I am getting somewhat busy for another couple of weeks and this topic deserves serious and long debate. Although I am somewhat reluctant to complicate things further with these functionalities I want to listen to what you have to say, I don’t want to repeat the mistake of not listening at you as I did for many years until now.



Best regards,

Rafael

Rafael,

Thanks for “CANDIDATE RULES FOR MINIMIZING THE PROJECT DURATION” paper. I will read it soon. I just spent 10 minutes reading the beginning of it. I read many papers. If you have an interesting one, send it to me (george.mejtsky@yahoo.com). I am interested in production/project scheduling, resource allocation, simulation,  optimization, and bikinis.

I have a question about your “I would say computing time in these jobs should not be much of an issue, not even on a laptop.”  In what timeframe would you expect to get your solution/schedule? How long are you/others willing to wait? 2-3 hours? More? The longer you wait the better the schedule can be found.

As for your “If there are other algorithms that should be added because they are better under certain circumstances, why not adding these options.”  How do you want to find a better algorithm? By testing, right? We are now doing some testing of Spider. What tests would you recommend?

I think Spider is better than most project scheduling software in many, if not all, circumstances. Do you know a situation where Spider would be worse? If an optimization software is better than others in one situation, it is probably as well better in most other situations.  Spider is even better than most production scheduling software, I believe. It is the iterative heuristic of Spider that is significantly better than priority/heuristic rules of the others.

I would bet that the schedule found by a priority/heuristic rule is very close, if not worse, to a randomly picked schedule. That’s why, I proposed to include in Spider the random/average priority. Not for use by the users of Spider, only for internal Spider’s referential use to calculate an “average” schedule in order to see how far from the “average” schedule the normal/optimized schedule is. I would like to compare the “average” schedule with the schedules of competitors.

Regards,

George

Vladimir,



Did Spider Project ever considered using drop down icons in the toolbars such as the following example used by Autocad? I don’t mean the ribbon as this takes much valuable space, the hundreds if not thousands of menu items in Autocad even requires a combination of the ribbon and drop down icons.







Best regards,

Rafael

Anoon,



Of course you can, but the constant might not be the same as might be based on a different 0 day. This one I figured it out by looking at some values and then by trial and error, for Excel there should be many references or you can figure it out yourself by tial and error until it converges.



What is novel in Spider Project is the concept of using recursive formulas, formulas whose value depends on itself. Of course in Spider Project these are a single loop run.



Best regards,

Rafael

Hi Rafael,



I just thought that I can do the same in excel, using your formula.



cheers

Quote from Vladimir:



_"In Spider Project you can enter recursive formulaes like making all durations two times longer. That is why we do not use automatic (Formulae) calculations."



_"You can set that formulaes that link cost components and cost centers will be executed automatically with any cost calculations. You can set that some formulaes will be executed automatically when you entered actual information and others not."



I still would like to have the additional option to select for “Automatic perform after schedule update”. This option when in conflict with recursive formulas or with other selected formulas to be dimmed and not available for selection until the user resolves the conflict, the same when creating recursive formulas.



In the following example my formula to display Start and Finish dates in nominal days is not computed automatically, I had to create a script to run the two formulae, one for Start and another for Finish.











If I can automate it when not in conflict, I would like to do so. But never eliminate the option for recursive formulas.



Best regards,

Rafael

"histogram window vertical scrolling" that is great news, as you know the horizontal scrolling other software do without showing the schedule above is no good. This will be better than those who can only show a single histogram.



About the script, forget it, so easy with a formula as per your suggestion, you can toggle back and forth at a snap.

I defined two formulae as follows:

Alap=’Alap’

Alap=’Asap’

just execute for desired value to toggle back and forth, yes as you said, a piece of cake, a third formula can easily be done if your model combines ALAP with ASAP so you can go back to the original.

Vladimir,



Early and Late curves done easily in two separate files, the same for the jobs comparison, because this I do only when baselining there is no issue. The export to Excel function with the baselines and updates shall be no problem.



Eventually might try a script to create the ALAP schedule with a single click of the mouse, but first things first, still crawling, after my first complete job I will be running.



Best regards,

Rafael

Vladimir,



For your knowledge, I use the ALAP data only to show the Owners and others not knowlegeable of CPM that the Progress Curve is not an absolute measure of your job status, not to mention ASAP only. The request is a matter of convenience, not of high priority. I will try with your suggestion.



Regarding the histograms the way Spider Project presents them, aligned with the schedule on top is just what I need. I keep my histograms one per resource as this is easier to understand but it will make it easier to have the lower screen to scroll verically as to accept as many histograms I need to be readily available and latter-on to be printed with my schedules. This request for me is of high priority.



By the way I am starting to explore the cost functions, something I rarely use but for the moment the interface seems very good, still to explore it at the updating time.



Best regards,

Rafael

1) I cannot vertical scroll the lower half window, is it a demo limitation?



2) The Labor Cost Curve uses as a reference an ASAP schedule, I can set another Baseline to show ALAP but not in the same screen two baselines, maybe I am wrong, please comment as I am trying to show Early and Late curves on the same screen.



Note costs are not linear as I am exploring other cost functions, using fixed costs on a few activities, don’t pay attention to the model details.



Best regards,

Rafael

Vladimir,



You got it right because of our laws acceleration using the same labor to produce more than a "days" work is forbidden. You got to use other shift that might start earlier or use more employees (no subcontractors, no way our laws will recognize individuals as independent contractors unless specific requirements are met.



Yes after they finish the production of a single day they will leave the construction site until next day.



We will enter 8 hours work and you better pay over minimum wage for the eight hours. If latter you are proved to evade the minimum wage law the penalty will be 100% payable to the employee plus all due labor taxes and very high penalties.



I am not sure but if you allow them to work over the basic eight hour production, the remaining might be interpreted as overtime and payable at twice the rate, here in the construction business our "Mandatory Decree" does not recognize 1-1/2 pay rate. For other industries it is different, the same as for holidays.



It would be good if you get info from Mainland US Contractors, to get the big picture.



Best regards,

Rafael

Vladimir,



For labor we pay 8 hours for a fixed production, the labor end its day when reaches the production, there are no different actual data, on the contrary and very simple a fixed production per fixed 8 hour or per day. No error with payment at all. By law we are not allowed to use piecework to evade the law and not pay labor tax. Only on rainy days an adjustment is made.



Regarding earth movement by independent truckers it is by cubic meter, these are considered individual contractors and the rate is established by a government agency.



If you move dirt on a road you must use these independent contractors, if within a site, without getting into any road you can use your own.



Here we have been for years in argument with the Workmen’s Compensation Agency that does not recognize truckers as independent contractors. We, contractors end up paying their Workmen’s Compensation based not on actual payroll but on an estimated payroll for the work based on a percentage of the payment to these individual contractors, kind of ironic.



In general we like the Workmen’s Comp idea as if you pay for it, in case of accident, you as employer have immunity, also the fee is reasonable, substantially lower than using private insurance companies. This we know because at some federal jobs we are required to use the private insurance companies and the fee is very high, and in addition as employer you do not get the immunity, being liable in case of accident.



Vladimir, different States have different laws, so there might be differences among the states. But the idea of providing you with as much information as I can is that you can understand our particular needs. I hope eventually Spider Project becomes one of the dominant CPM software here, because of its own merits, because is excellent software.



If Primavera can be all over the world, why Spider Project being a better product cannot? For this to happen you have to stop thinking only on the Russian experience, I understand your question is because Spider Team cares.



By the way on friday I was at a meeting discussing a Bid, because of the job duration we will be in need of scheduling two shift, if awarded the job, here Spider fuctionality shines as no other.



Best regards,

Rafael

Vladimir,



We call it piecework, very common here for some trades such as cement plastering and masonry block installation. I can be specific only for Puerto Rico, in the Continental US, I suppose, it is similar because we are subject to the same laws regarding minimum wage.



Here is common to pay a whole day or eight hours for a required production, is easier to model in our payroll systems. For example the installation of 350 concrete blocks means eight hours even when you finish after 5 hours. Our laws require you pay a minimum wage and report payroll per hour. Also you cannot claim these are individual subcontractors and avoid paying payroll tax such as social security, unemployment insurance, workmen’s compensation and vacations among a few others. Our local labor department recognizes these agreements if written and the result payment ends being more than the minimum wage.



Therefore in this case we get a better prediction on productivity; we schedule the resource the eight hours for the agreed production.



On the other hand we pay earth moving on trucks per a formula as established by our government agencies, these are considered to be individual contractors when they use their own trucks. Here we have to use average production based on an estimated capacity of the truck and the particular conditions of the job, such as the distance of earth moving by truck.



Best regards,

Rafael

Vladimir,



Spider not only shines with regard to resource usage, probably the most important of all functionalities, but also in many others.



Among one of the functionalities we have not talked is how you update the schedule, this is someting you don’t realize at the beginning, when you start exploring the software.



It seems that by default when you update the schedule you update the period actuals and not only the to-date, it also prevent updating the schedule activities by mistake and keeps a clear and auditable log of every update. Keeping the integrity of the data is a serious matter, Spider takes care of it in a practical way.



If you can give me some hints on this, with the understanding I am new at it, I will appreciate it.



Best regards,

Rafael