In this section:
· Organising Your Project using Activity Codes
· View SAP Data in the Columns
· Setting up the Project Calendar
· Maximising your Resource Utilisation
This section gives you an overview of the common tasks a scheduler performs once they have transferred work orders into a P3 project using Weavecentrix Desktop. It is not intended as a reference guide for scheduling in P3 as it assumes that the reader has a good knowledge of using Primavera P3. You should also refer to the P3 help for additional information on using P3 functionality.
The three business scenarios in this manual also look at how work orders are used in a P3 project and they are specific to the individual maintenance strategies. It is recommended that you look at this general section for an overview and then refer to the business scenarios for an example that is more specific.
· Minor Shuts and Opportunity Outages
Often, your starting point for transferring work orders into Primavera P3 will be an empty project which doesn’t have any activity codes, layouts or filters set up. When Weavecentrix Desktop sets up your activities with the resources and activity codes in your project, all the elements are there, you just need to start setting them up.
Although this first view is a huge improvement over SAP’s Planning Board, it needs a small amount of work from you to start generating real benefits from it.
Your first step once your work orders have been transferred to your Primavera P3 project is to group the activities according to your preferred activities codes. Remember that you can change the activity codes that Weavecentrix Desktop sets up in your P3 project by using the Mapping Wizard.
In the example shown below, the maintenance group prefer to view their activities in a priority view. They specify their priority firstly by the order type. They then use SAP’s priority field to indicate how urgent a work order is within the order type category. Finally, they have shown the work order grouping of the activities.
You should refer to the Primavera P3 help for detailed information on setting up Layouts where the activity codes are grouped. The Layout menu options are under the View menu. You can set up many different views of your project in P3 – this is one of P3’s strong points.
Once you have set up your preferred layouts in Primavera P3, you can copy them from an existing project to a new one. In your new P3 project, once you have transferred your work orders into it using Weavecentrix Desktop, use the View > Layout > Transfer menu command to get the Layout Transfer dialog box. In that dialog box, find your existing project, select the layout that you want to copy into your new project and then click on the OK button. Note that if the activity code structures are not the same in both projects, the activity code groups won’t be replicated.
Grouping the activities isn’t the only way to easily view SAP information that is related to your activities. You can also view this information in the columns of your Gantt table view. Use the Columns menu option of the Format menu in P3 to arrange the fields displayed in the table view.
The SAP operation number is brought across from SAP as a custom data item. The custom data item OPER is used to tag activities with the SAP operation number. You can view this custom data item by selecting an activity from a work order and then clicking on the Custom tab of the Activity Form.
The example shown below has both the SAP Operation Number and the Functional Location as columns displayed in the P3 Project. The use of SAP work order header fields such as functional location, equipment and maintenance activity type can make the scheduler’s job a great deal simpler by giving them the information they need to link like jobs together in the schedule.
When you set up your column names in the Column Format dialog box, you can force a name to split across two lines by adding the "|" character into the name. For example, the column name "Functional|Location" will have Functional in the top line and Location in the lower line.
The use of the Project Calendar in Primavera P3 is important to the scheduling of resources. You use it to determine the length of the working day and which days are working days.
For new projects which have Hour as the planning unit, Primavera P3 will set up your project calendar as having continuous work time. In most cases, this isn’t what you intended and can cause problems when scheduling and, especially, when resource levelling.
To set up your project calendar in your P3 project, select the Calenders menu item on the Data menu. This displays the Calendars dialog box. Select the calendar with the calendar ID of "1". This is the first calendar under the Global Calendar. Click on the Standard button to set the work hours.
This displays the Standard Hourly Information dialog box for this calendar. Set your working hours in this dialog box. Note that P3 will take a time like 16:30 and change it to 16:59. This is because P3 works in hourly blocks for this type of project. If you want to specify a non-work day, set both the start time and the end time to 00:00.
Although P3 can use a split shift system in an hourly project, it is more usual for schedulers to set up multiple calendars to represent the shift patterns. They then manually assign these calendars to the activities and resources which will work these additional shift patterns. This is the normal way of working where there is a large day shift and a small night shift within the maintenance group.
The real power of using such external scheduling tools such as Primavera P3 is their ability to give the scheduler more control over specifying and calculating the schedule. This section gives a quick summary of the process for specifying relationships, setting constraints and then scheduling your P3 project. You should refer to the P3 help and reference manual for a complete description of this process.
Relationships - Once you have your work orders arranged into groups that are relevant to your organisation, you can use P3’s relationship drag and drop tool to specify the relationships between activities. You define these relationships by dragging between any two activities you want to connect. You click to the left or right of the first activity and drag to the left or right of the successor activity. The mouse cursor changes to a trident symbol as you define relationships.
Constraints - You can easily apply constraints to your activities using P3’s constraint tool. To apply a constraint place the cursor at the start or end of the activity bar you want to constrain. Press the <Ctrl> key and click and hold the left mouse key. The mouse pointer changes to a hammer symbol. Now drag the mouse to the right or left. The constraint date will be shown as you drag the mouse. When you release the mouse button, P3 opens the Constraints dialog box.
Confirm the constraint you set with the mouse or assign another one using the dropdown box. When you finish, click OK.
Scheduling - Once you have set up your relationships and set your constraints, you can now begin to calculate your schedule. Press the <F9> key to begin scheduling. Specify your Data Date in the Schedule dialog box and click on the Schedule Now button. P3 will schedule your project and produce a schedule report.
Resource levelling is a process which help you make sure that the resources you have available have sufficient work for them, such that they have little or no downtime. It is also used to ensure that you have sufficient resources available to perform the activities in your project such that your resources aren’t overloaded.
Whilst the resource levelling algorithms in Primavera P3 are a powerful tool for achieving these objectives, they should not be used in isolation. The scheduler’s knowledge of the plant, the maintenance crews and the planned work is the best source for optimising any resource allocation. The scheduler, using their knowledge, can set relationships and constraints on the schedule as well as possibly changing the resource allocation on activities to reflect the real world constraints such as geographical location, ease of access or system availability.
Where P3 excels is in the ability to view the resource allocation over a period of time whilst the scheduler manipulates the schedule. The example below shows the scheduler viewing the resource profile for a work crew. The profile shows the normal limit in yellow and the overload limit in red. In this example, the scheduler is looking to flatten the resource allocation to the normal limit to avoid any overtime.
One option open to the scheduler is to use P3’s resource levelling. Under the Tools menu, select the Level menu option. This opens the Level dialog box. You should refer to the P3 help before using the Resource Levelling functionality. The resources that you allocate in this dialog box should be driving resources with limits set. You should also have set the Project Calendar work times. It is normal to mark the Schedule prior to levelling check box – it defaults to this for forward levelling. Click on the Level Now button to level your project. P3 will produce a Levelling Analysis Report after the levelling run.