Schedule for large-scale custom-job manufacturing (Proj03)

[Jeff Wow]

I'm having a dilemma determining how to properly set up my company’s Project
schedule. The company is best classified as a custom-job manufacturing
facility. We produce jobs composed of unique-to-the-job products, in varying
quantities per job. Our contract requires us to track this fully in a
schedule, and we’ve been given Project 2003 with which to do so.

We need to track each job through a 12-step WBS. Within a job, each product
moves independently – meaning that Product A can move through Step One and
Step Two while Products B & C are still in Step One.

Currently we use each job as a summary task, with each of the 12 WBS steps
as a detail task below it. Our schedules don’t show accurate information for
each of the 12 WBS steps, but the start and end dates of the jobs themselves
are accurate enough. This is no longer accurate enough as we’ve grown in size
greatly.

My first thought was to track each product as its own summary task, with the
12 WBS steps being the detail tasks below it. But each job may have any
quantity of final products, ranging from single to triple digits, and we have
400+ jobs every year! If I did that, I’d have “12 WBS steps per product x 50+
products per job x 400+ jobs per year†number of detail tasks! As the only
scheduler, that is a bit far-fetched.

Each job will be a separate Project file, inserted into a master schedule
with a shared resource pool.

Can anyone help me out?

 

[Jim Aksel]

Sounds like an earned value type problem to me. I think your approach as each
job in a separate file is a good idea. For your "earned value" I would
schedule each of the WBS Steps like this:

WBS STEP 1 - Paint 15 Widgets Purple
WBS STEP 2 - Polish 19 Widgets

Within each item, your %Complete becomes the number of widgets produced
divided by the number total (here it is 15 or 19).

This may corrupt your schudul logic since as long as 1 widget is painted
purple it can move to Step2. So the relationship is not truly FS for the
group. Yes, the most exact way to do it is to schedule each Widget ... but
that is a lot of work. So use you can use FS but you may want to consider
SS+3days (or whatever the lag needs to be for the next step). However, make
sure you have at least one FS successor on each task.

You will need to babysit remaining work and remaining duration on all these
WBS steps

Consider using Physical%Complete for your earned value. Make sure each task
is set to that EV method under the advanced tab of the task properties dialog
box (just double click the task -- you can do more than one at a time).

Also, Tools/Options/Calculations/Earned Value select Physical%Complete.
Then ... Format/Bar Styles... change the progress lines to read through
"Physical %Complete" so they show nicely on your chart.

In closing. Consider your WBS column. You may want to use a spare text or
outline code column for your WBS to track at a more summary level so you can
use WBS 1.2.3 instead of 1.2.3.1.2.1.1.1.1.2.3 on the lower details. That is
up to you. The nice part about a more summary WBS is that you can use the
custom grouping features in Project/Group By... so you will be able to group
all the WBS elements together regardless of which file they are in. We find
that to be very handy.

There's a lot of info here... let us know if you need any more assistance.
However, it is a holiday so it may take until Friday or Monday.


--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com

 

[Steve]

Jeff,
I work for a simliar company and I have been the sole scheduler for about
a year now. It's a full time 9 hour a day job but it can be done. I'll ask
you some questions and try to help you as much as I can.

I'm having a dilemma determining how to properly set up my company’s Project
schedule. The company is best classified as a custom-job manufacturing
facility. We produce jobs composed of unique-to-the-job products, in varying
quantities per job. Our contract requires us to track this fully in a
schedule, and we’ve been given Project 2003 with which to do so.

My first question is do you use MS Project to simply track progress of each
job, or do you use it to schedule the order of the work before work has been
started? For instance; you get an order for something to be built. Do you
start building the product and record the progress as it comes in, or do you
as the scheduler build a schedule based on the available resources and have
the assembly team follow your schedule to completion?

And how do you track the progress being done in the first place? Is it
hourly based where you know the amount of time it will take to finish each
job (or at least aproximately)? Or like my company, we actually keep track of
the number of unit we produce. We have an idea of how many hours and days
(Work and Duration) it will take and that is included on our baselines, but
ultimately the progress is recorded by how many "cogs" we assemble. If we are
to assemble 50 cogs we will baseline a duration of 5 days. If we build 6 cogs
per day we will finish the job ahead of schedule. To acurately record this I
make use of the Actual Start / Finish / Duration as well as manually updating
% Complete.

We need to track each job through a 12-step WBS. Within a job, each product
moves independently – meaning that Product A can move through Step One and
Step Two while Products B & C are still in Step One.

Are the independancies known prior to the job begining? Meaning; within Job
#1 does your schedule show, prior to any work actually be completed, that
Product A is going to move through Step One before Products B & C are
finished with Step One?

Currently we use each job as a summary task, with each of the 12 WBS steps
as a detail task below it. Our schedules don’t show accurate information for
each of the 12 WBS steps, but the start and end dates of the jobs themselves
are accurate enough. This is no longer accurate enough as we’ve grown in size
greatly.

One thing that might help is to build each project with the Schedule Project
from Project Finish Date option enabled. If you know when, or about when, the
project will finish you can schedule everything from that point and as each
task is begun, use the Actual Start Date to show progress in a logical
manner. Link as many tasks as possible, but if you do not know when come
tasks will start based on others leave them unlinked. The Finish Date of that
task will end on the project finish date you set from the Project Information
screen if it is left unlinked. When progress begins on that task, use the
Actual Start date before entering progress. This will cause the start of the
task to jump to the Actual Start date you entered while leaving the duration
in tact and adjusting a new Finish date based on the Duration and Start Date.

My first thought was to track each product as its own summary task, with the
12 WBS steps being the detail tasks below it. But each job may have any
quantity of final products, ranging from single to triple digits, and we have
400+ jobs every year! If I did that, I’d have “12 WBS steps per product x 50+
products per job x 400+ jobs per year†number of detail tasks! As the only
scheduler, that is a bit far-fetched.

Yes that is a lot of work. I am not sure the numbr of tasks I see come and
go over the course of a year, but it is not that high. How quickly is a
typical 12 item product completed? There is a feature that will automatically
increase the progress each day if the task is supposed to have work done that
day. Check out Tools > Tracking for for information. Good luck and let me
know if I can be any more help.

Each job will be a separate Project file, inserted into a master schedule
with a shared resource pool.

Can anyone help me out?

I work for the same type of company. Though we have maybe 200 jobs per year,
we have far more than 12