Scheduling technique

[bjlasota]

I was given a new task today to figure out a new way to schedule within project. I'm not sure if it exists, so I'd like to throw it out there and see if there's currently a way to do it.

I have a task list of 100 items. Some items have dependencies, I have a solid start date. I have 6 mechanics. I have the number of mechanics it takes to complete each task, but it's not necessarily tied to a specific mechanic, just the generic group of mechanics(1 or 2 of 6). So project can schedule 1 of 6 mechanics to each task so that the outage timeline is as short as possible while not overlapping mechanics based on their work calendar. I want to auto schedule this outage and see how long it would take based on the durations each job will take and the number of mechanics for each task.

 

[johnherman]

Is "mechanic" accurate for each of the 6 mechanics. In other words, are the mechanics all equally skilled or can it be assumed so?

If yes, so far so good. This would be "fixed work" and "effort driven".

Would each mechanic have his/her own calendar?

If yes, then it may be possible using resource leveling. The big if......if all mechanics are considered equal.

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adaptive uber info galaxies (bigger, better, faster than agile big data clouds)

 

[bjlasota]

Yes, all the mechanics are considered equal. There are 6 individuals that work 630a-230p monday through friday. I've created Mechanic1, Mechanic2, Mech.... as resources and selected their calendars accordingly. I'm wondering if I can tell MS project how many Mechanics a certain task needs, and then let it auto assign tasks with that number of mechanics in the most efficient way?

My trouble is, that of those 6 people, one person may not show up on a day their scheduled, but I have a pot of others that I can pull from to temporarily fill mechanic2's position for the day. So I don't want to assign specific names.

 

[johnherman]

I don't think this is going to be straight-forward. You're going to have to push/prompt Project to assign multiple resources, and perhaps prevent Project from assigning too many mechanics. You remember the old Fred Brooks line about Project Management? It was in his book The Mythical Man Month (which I recommend) 9 women can't have a baby in one month. MS Project doesn't understand that, and there's no easy way to control it within resource leveling. While project can handle the one resource 9 month baby, when you open it up to 2 mechanics per task, it can't understand why 3 or 4 won't work. You have to force that manually.

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adaptive uber info galaxies (bigger, better, faster than agile big data clouds)

 

[bjlasota]

I think what I've figured out is that I can set a mechanic as a resource and give them 600% for 6 people. Then in task information, set the resource percent to the number of people I need(2 people = 200%), then auto-level the project and create a new column to put down specific names as the items are scheduled. Thanks for all the insight. Helped me think of a few ideas.

 

[JulieInMaine]

See:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...-project/813a057d-9d0c-4d19-a824-66306d9fed97