Consumable resource leveling capabilities of scheduling software

Member for

15 years 9 months

Hi all

I have updated this post and added screenshots

I appreciate the efforts of Raphael to demonstrate that resource management and more, in particular, the leveling of resources is crucial for the creation of sound scheduling models.

I use resource leveling and smoothing techniques all the time in my scheduling models but had not attempted to level material resources in Primavera P6.

Yes, you can level material resources in the same manner as labor resources as demonstrated in the 6 screenshots below

Fig.001 The bricks in the unleveled condition

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Fig 002  The leveling specification at a rate of 700 bricks per day

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Fig. 003 shows the effect of the leveling of the material resource "bricks" on the activities. 

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:4971:]]

Fig 004 demonstrates the bricklayers in the unleveled condition

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Fig 005 Demonstrates the leveling specification for the leveling of the labor resource "bricklayers". The maximum units/  per time is set at 16 hours per day. 

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:4974:]]

Fig. 006 Demonstrates the condition when the resource "Bricklayer" is leveled

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[[wysiwyg_imageupload:4975:]]

I trust this demonstrates that Primavera P6 can level material and labor resources

Please visit my blog with the link below and you see the leveling of materials and labor resources.

https://primavendum.com/leveling-resources

Regards Johannes

Member for

21 years 8 months

I will assume bricks quantity is not proportional to wall area and will use non-labor units as to mean number of bricks.  It is weird to name quantity as "units", I wonder what is the name for unit of measure.  At home if you say 10 bricks it means quantity 10 and unit is bricks, 10 is not the "units", must be some combination of English and French.  I can figure out Spanglish but not Frenchglish.



 

Member for

24 years 9 months

I tried to look at Johannes link and found that my location is blacklisted.

So No comments!

Member for

21 years 8 months

Johannes,

I do not use P6 I use Spider Project and the solution comes at a single click of the mouse. This afternoon after I return from other duties I will take a look at it. 

  • I can see from your images the brick delivery amount but cannot see the bricks amount for each installation activity, please provide this information, I am not sure if every M2 of wall requires the same amount of bricks as to linearly distribute the bricks amounts.
  • I can see from your solution image that the sequence of activities follow the activity order, that is suspicious as in most cases a good solution does not follow this order unless logically linked among them. 
  • Activity splitting is usually undesirable, but not always. Your solution seems like does not consider allowing for activity splitting which does not makes sense in brick installation, a condition set in my example. A condition that can be toggled on/off at a click of the mouse.  A condition that shall be applied at the activity level.
  • Your example looks overly simplistic as it deals with a single consumable resource instead of three.

I provided a simple schedule for the purpose of illustrating consumable resource leveling, please give us your solution to the sample schedule to see how good it can be. 

Thank you very much for your response, you have been the first and only person willing to deal with some numbers for consumable resources within this discussion.  No doubt it can be done with manual methods, but how good and reliable is of concern.

Best Regards,

Rafael

Member for

24 years 9 months

Yes Rafael, it can be done the way you suggested.

But when plan we expect certain probability of assigned resources. Actual productivity on the certain day may be different for many reasons. It does not mean that the rest of activity will be done with the same speed. In any case remaining schedule shall be adjusted after entering actual data.

Member for

21 years 8 months

For a jump start I am using an example where materials are assigned to activities, the simplest case of consumable resource assignments.  If the software cannot deal with the simplest scenarios I do not expect them to be able to deal with real but more complex consumable resource leveling.

Cannot be any easier.

Maybe I got it wrong but from the literature I understood they are capable of consumable resource leveling.  If I got it wrong all is needed is a clear statement they are not capable of leveling consumable resources.  I want to know if they have consumable resource leveling functionality. I want to know how good the leveling is if they have the capability to do so.

Member for

24 years 9 months

Rafael,

consumable resource assignment is no less interesting.

Materials can be assigned directly to activites as fixed amount, or per unit of time or volume.

But they can also be assigned to renewable resources (a car consumes gas whenever it moves) or to renewable resource assignmments (if we want to plan and to control material consumption by certain resources or contractors).

Materials can be consumed at activity start, at activity finish, during activity execution or using combination of these options.

If materials are not properly assigned their consumption planning is not reliable.

So it is interesting if scheduling packages can properly model consumable resource assignments.