I want to assign equipment as a resource

[CMOSCAT]

Our company rents containers, and recently decided that Project would be a
useful tool for planning and tracking. We currently have three different
batches with three different customers. I want to allocate those resources
as discrete batches, i.e. if we rent a batch of 120 containers to a customer
for 120 days, I want the resource usage to be 120 containers per day, not 1
container per day. I tried to treat the batches as a 'Work', rather than
'Material' resource but it didn't help. Because the containers are
identical, it's possible to change the absolute numbers in each batch, so
next year if customer A wanted less containers, we could 'transfer' the
surplus to customer B. In the short term, I'd want to do this by using 80%
of 'Resource A' with customer A, and adding 20% of 'Resource B' to customer
B. I appreciate that it will eventually become so complicated that we'll
'recalibrate' the batch sizes.

Thanks,

Donald Guthrie
Commercial Manager

 

[John]

Our company rents containers, and recently decided that Project would be a
useful tool for planning and tracking. We currently have three different
batches with three different customers. I want to allocate those resources
as discrete batches, i.e. if we rent a batch of 120 containers to a customer
for 120 days, I want the resource usage to be 120 containers per day, not 1
container per day. I tried to treat the batches as a 'Work', rather than
'Material' resource but it didn't help. Because the containers are
identical, it's possible to change the absolute numbers in each batch, so
next year if customer A wanted less containers, we could 'transfer' the
surplus to customer B. In the short term, I'd want to do this by using 80%
of 'Resource A' with customer A, and adding 20% of 'Resource B' to customer
B. I appreciate that it will eventually become so complicated that we'll
'recalibrate' the batch sizes.

Thanks,

Donald Guthrie
Commercial Manager

Donald,
Your post appears in a newsgroup that deals with Project developer
questions (e.g. VBA). A more appropriate newsgroup would be:
microsoft.public.project which deals with general questions on Project.

Nonetheless, from you scenario it isn't real clear why someone suggested
Project as the tool of choice. Project is a planning/scheduling tool -
it can do other things but it certainly isn't optimized for them. On the
other hand, a spreadsheet application (e.g. Excel) is much better at
tracking numerical data, such as keeping track of financial data or
quantities of something.

I'm not sure why you want to see how many containers a particular
customer has every day. The only important factor I can see is that
customer "A" is renting 120 containers for a period of 120 days. He may
in fact only "use" 100 of the containers on any particular day, but all
you should care about is that 120 of your containers are committed for a
120 period to customer "A" and are therefore unavailable to other
customers. This type of container "tracking" is easily handled by a
spreadsheet.

If there is something I'm missing here from a schedule standpoint please
elaborate. Project certainly can be used to show the overall commitment
of containers on a timeline, but it will not show the type of daily
detail you want because that's not how Project schedules. Project
"schedules" labor or non-labor resources over time. Work hours are
accrued "x" hours at a time until the total is reached. The same is true
of non-labor resources. They are "used up" over the period of time. In
the case of a rented non-labor resource that is not used up, its "work"
value IS achieved over the time it is rented. The cost of that resource
can be tracked as accrued at the beginning, end, or prorated over the
period of use.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[CMOSCAT]

John,

Thanks for the information. I'll try the public site in future. We decided
on PROJECT because it can be used to automatically link events. In the past,
we've done project scheduling etc in EXCEL which is easy to do, but difficult
(given our in-house IT expertise!) to update/show changes.

In our case, rent = use, if a customer rents 120 but only uses 100, we're
unable to re-assign the idle 20. It's not our intention to use PROJECT for
day to day scheduling, but to look at 12 - 18 month forecasting. Also, we
can use it for smaller manufacturing/repair projects. It's main use is to
produce GANNT charts that can be updated

After a bit of fiddling about, I found that if I set the unit consumption
rate at 120 containers per day, it worked out. Hopefully once I've gone
through the steps a couple of dozen times it will stick!

Regards,

Donald

 

[John]

John,

Thanks for the information. I'll try the public site in future. We decided
on PROJECT because it can be used to automatically link events. In the past,
we've done project scheduling etc in EXCEL which is easy to do, but difficult
(given our in-house IT expertise!) to update/show changes.

In our case, rent = use, if a customer rents 120 but only uses 100, we're
unable to re-assign the idle 20. It's not our intention to use PROJECT for
day to day scheduling, but to look at 12 - 18 month forecasting. Also, we
can use it for smaller manufacturing/repair projects. It's main use is to
produce GANNT charts that can be updated

After a bit of fiddling about, I found that if I set the unit consumption
rate at 120 containers per day, it worked out. Hopefully once I've gone
through the steps a couple of dozen times it will stick!

Regards,

Donald

Donald,
You're welcome. I still don't understand why you care whether about the
containers in use per day. All you should want to know is that customer
"A" has 120 containers "locked up" for 120 days - therefore, that
quantity of containers is not available to anyone else - end of story.

If you set up a usage rate of 120 containers per day, then after 120
days, Project will show a total "consumption" of 14.4K containers. The
Resource Usage view will appear to show what you want, but it is totally
wrong and misleading.

Nonetheless, if you are happy with the results, I wish you luck in your
endeavors with Project scheduling.

John
Project MVP