Workload leveling and modification in the plan.

When loading a new plan

Workload leveling can be performed at the time of creating a new plan. The leveling is performed directly after the activities are loaded. With or without workload leveling, the parallel planning attributes define the groups that are created when a new plan is created. However, without workload leveling, only one group is created for each unique combination of parallel attribute values. With workload leveling, a group set and a group are created for each unique combination of parallel attribute values.

When a new plan is created in combination with workload leveling, the created groups may or may not be part of group sets. Possibly, stand-alone groups are also created. So a new plan can include one or more group sets and one or more stand-alone groups.

The modifications that must be implemented are:

  • When the group for an activity is available, Infor LN tries to find a matching attribute set for the group that must be used for workload leveling.
    • When matching attribute set for the group is not available, the group set is also not available. Hence, Workload leveling is ignored.
    • When matching attribute set for the group is available, the group set is also available, Hence, Workload leveling must be performed.
Note

All the activities are currently linked to a single group. When all the activities are loaded, workload leveling is performed. The parallel planning attributes are considered for both; the group set and the group.

When adding activities to an existing plan (re-generate plan)

For a plan, the group sets with multiple groups may exist. The new activities are always added to the first group of a group set. So after loading the new activities, the plan includes existing and new activities.

When new activities are added to the existing plan, the workload leveling is different from the workload leveling performed for a new plan. Following are the possible scenarios:

  • Group sets with only one group - These group sets are created when the new activities are loaded. The workload leveling process in this scenario:
    • Create new groups.
    • Distribute the activities of each group set across all groups of the group set.
  • Group sets with multiple groups to which no new activities are added. No changes are made to these groups.
  • Group sets with multiple groups to which new activities are added. The workload leveling process in this scenario:
    • Check whether new groups must be created for the group set.
    • Distribute the new activities in the group set across all groups of the group set.
When adding activities to an existing plan (keep existing plan)

When new activities are added to an existing plan and the existing plan is not modified (except from adding new activities), Infor LN searches for the correct group for this activities. If the group is available, Infor LN must check:

  • If the group is part of a group set . The group in the group set with the earliest finish time is selected. The activity is added to this group.
  • If, the group is not part of a group set. The activity is added to this group.
When planning the activities
  • The activities in an activity set are sorted before the activities are planned. When workload leveling is performed, the activities can be sorted based on the earliest start time, planned start time, planned finish time and latest finish time. When activities are planned, a new sorting option, the latest start time is included. The latest start time of an activity is calculated from the latest finish time and the activity duration. When the activity is planned backwards from the latest finish time, the latest start time is available. Note: The calendar, availability type and time zone of an activity is used to calculate the latest start time.
  • When the Respect Earliest Start Time check boxes for service order, work order and planned activities are not selected in the Service Planning Parameters (tsspc0100m000) session, slack may occur between two activities. In this case, the slack algorithm must be performed to minimize the slack as much as possible. Note: The difference in running the slack algorithm for workload leveling and during the planning process is:
    • For the planning process, the slack is minimized using the activities in the same activity set. As a result, an activity can never be moved to another activity set or another group.
    • For workload leveling, the slack is minimized using the activities that are not yet assigned to a group. As a result an activity can be moved to another activity set or another group.