Planning & Scheduling for shop fabrication

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The action or process of manufacturing or inventing something call fabrication there are many kinds of fabrication like steel fabrication, metal fabrication in Western Canada saskarc.com is a fabrication service provider and Equipment sales and rental. for more information you can check this http://saskarc.com/steel-fabrication/

The following is a sample schedule for two jobs I prepared under a single master schedule for simplicity as to show how spatial and consumable resources can be modeled.  Neither P6 or MSP provide such functionality, you must look elsewhere, perhaps Spider Project or Aurora.

Note that while the jobs share production space there is no logic link between jobs, if any job is delayed or halted because of credit issues every time this happens if using soft/preferential links it would be a nightmare revising the links.

For many such jobs you better use Portfolio Management where every job will have a separate schedule but will be resource leveled on a portfolio of shared schedules and resources. As soon as a job is finished then you detach it from the portfolio keeping active only those still unfinished.

SCHEDULING OF TASKS

If your jobs can be put on hold because of lack of fabrication materials you need to consider consumable resources that cannot be modeled as if regular resources.

• pipes of different size and materials
• structural steel sections
• raw materials received in multiple deliveries

Material Requirements Planning (MRP) is a computer-based production planning and inventory control system. MRP is concerned with both production scheduling and inventory control. It is a material control system that attempts to keep adequate inventory levels to assure that required materials are available when needed.

Materials Requirement Planning (MRP) is not just given a schedule what I need; you also got to consider the other side, what happens if the required materials are not in time, what shall I do?  It is not unusual that because of delivery limitations you have to plan for materials deliveries not as per an ideal world.

If your jobs can be put on hold because of lack of fabrication space you need to consider spatial resources, again these resources cannot be modeled using regular resource types.

• shop areas

You can try modeling such jobs using artificial links to move your jobs among one/multiple production areas and hand splitting of activities until consumable materials become available.  Keep in mind this can be difficult for a single job, now imagine hundreds of jobs with changing conditions every day that might require hand changing all the logic.

http://www.pmknowledgecenter.com/node/104

Frequency and methodology for schedule updating is another important consideration.  Because I do 100% construction jobs our approach is simple, we use default scheduling option.

COST ACCOUNTING

A practical approach can be:

1. For timed cash flow cost load the jobs at a high WBS level. There is no need for much granularity.
2. For time and materials where much granularity is needed use separate accounting system even though theoretically you can do it with some scheduling software. Here you will need supporting documentation such as materials transfers, time cards, use of shop area(s) if billable ... It might be required/desirable for time and material records be signed ASAP by a client representative.

Instead of using a single Jack of all Trades I prefer to follow Best of Breed approach. For Scheduling I use Spider Project, for Accounting I rather use SAP or SAGE even when both of the last two have a Scheduling Module [by far none the best scheduling tool].

Good Luck,

Rafael

I answered by E-mail.

Best Regards,

Vladimir

Sreejith Nair,



You could try this,



Create a master plan in MSP for all jobs.



Create an XL spreadsheet with the following columns.



Job No

Job Name

Baseline Finish

Current Finish

Delivery Date

Float



Once the master plan is complete, list all the jobs in XL complete with job number/name and the customers required date.

Copy the baseline dates from your plan into the XL spreadsheet.

Take the current finish date from your MSP master plan and paste special the link to XL so it updates automatically when you open the spreadsheet.



Float will be the distance between the customers needed delivery date and the current date.



Sort the XL table by float and it will give you a rough priority based upon delivering on-time to the customer.

This methodology is used by many plants where Spider Project is used for production scheduling.



With MS Project the approach shall be different. It cannot level resources on project portfolio. So you shall create multi-project and add the projects that represent new orders to this portfolio.

MS Project cannot work with activity volumes. So you shall create this field in Excel, calculate activity duration in Excel and then export this information to MS Project. Norm libraries shall be created in Excel too. But if the number of work types is high then you shall think about other tools.

I recommend to create a library of typical orders. Each order is a small project in this library (we call it as the library of typical fragnets). In these projects all links, resources and other constraints shall be defined. If the new order appears (contract signed) then corresponding project shall be added to your multi-project (portfolio) with the adjustment of physical quantities (volumes). Using MS Project you shall adjust the volumes (and durations) manually before adding the order to multi-project.



Everything is much easier in Spider Project but the approach is the same - you shall start with creating the library of norms and the library of typical orders.



Regards,

Vladimir

Hi Sreejith!

Mike presumed that the jobs have delivery dates and are made when you received some orders. This is one model. Another one - that you produced something and place it at some storage for future buyers (mass production).

I asked my questions to be able to understand your task.



If you produce something by orders then your task can be considered as project portfolio management. Each order can be considered as the separate project. All orders constitute project portfolio. The scheduling can be done using project and portfolio management software like Spider Project. You are right suggesting to use Norms libraries. In Spider Project we call them Reference-books. These Reference-books can include the databases on resource productivities on typical asignments, marterial requirements per typical activity volume units, unit costs, etc.



The original activity information includes the volume (quantity) of work to be done in physical units (pieces, meters, tons, etc.) and assigned resources. Activity duration is calculated basing on productivity norms.

These norms shall be adjusted regularly.



Best Regards,

Vladimir

The best methodology to manage your work depends upon the tools you have at your disposal.

50 JOBS A WEEK!!!



Considering a 6 day week, daily output is 8.33 jobs a day



Considering 10 hour a day, you r executing 1 job an hour



U can Prepare a tracker in this case for small jobs (Excel file)



It will b very easy to monitor and update.



Just refer to any project from PEB (Pre-Engineered Buildings) sector, wherein they complete hundreds of jobs from different sections (Hot-rolled, cold-rolled, B.O. items and direct from factory to site and so on)



It will be very cumbersome a prepare a master schedule as jobs will be keep on mounting up. 50 jobs a week, means u have 200+ jobs ongoing in different areas.



Its better that you divide the jobs into different zones. Like, if factory is in UAE, then u may split jobs from



- Dubai

- RAK

- Sharjah

- Abu Dhabi

- Others

- Exports and So, on.



This will make ur schedule look easy and easy to track.



Cheers,



Ravi

Hi Sreejith



From what I have just read each "job" has a number of activities which are resource loaded and effort modelled for duration.



Presumably each "job" has a delivery date on the order.



Your priority must be the "jobs" with the least float between completion and and delivery.



Once you have set up your schedule of "jobs" on your barchart - each with its own delivery date - you can just keep the system rolling by removing completed "jobs" and adding new orders.



The resource modelling can be refined from the time feed back.



PowerProject is good for this type of scheduling because you can get down to a time unit in seconds if necessary. Also you can copy / paste data directly from spreadsheets.



Best regards



Mike Testro.

Sreejith Nair wrote:

5)Which ever jobs are ready with material and has got a green signal from Engg., can be started.

6)Make a master schedule for the week(Remember we have 300 ongoing jobs and we are not going to do all of them in a week !). List the jobs which are ’Ready’ and include in the master schedule.Say we have 50 jobs ready for the week.



If several jobs compete for the same resources and all are ready to start which will be chosen? You did not describe the methodology that shall be the same if there are 50 jobs in a week or 500.

Hi Sreejith.



I get the impression that you are asking us who know how to do it to tell you how to do it.



What you are asking is simple planning controls.



Break the work down into manageable sections.



Add proper resources and calendars.



Link up the sections.



Reschedule.



Done! What could be simpler?



Best regards



Mike Testro