Handling Slack

Handling slack is part of the workload leveling process. Slack may occur after adding an activity to a group. When the Respect Earliest Start Time check boxes are selected for service order, work order and planned activities in the Resource Planning Parameters (tsspc0101m000) session, an activity cannot be started before the earliest start time. Effectively, slack may occur after adding the activity to a group.

If the respect earliest start time check box is selected, the slack may occur and the slack algorithm is used to assign the activity. The algorithm manages the slack by scheduling activities that are not workload leveled. The slack algorithm is a two step process:

  1. Selecting the groups to which the activities are added. The activities must start as early as possible. Therefore activities can be added to only those groups that has finish time earlier than or equal to the earliest start time of the activity.
  2. Infor LN implements slack algorithm to minimize the slack for each of the selected groups. All the activities that are not yet workload leveled, are considered and for each activity Infor LN checks if the activities can minimize (partly) the slack. The slack algorithm can be considered complete when:
    • all the activities are checked and no more activities are available to minimize the slack.
    • the slack is completely filled.
Note

The slack calculation is not applicable when the Sort Method for service order, work order and planned activities is set to Earliest Start in the Resource Planning Parameters (tsspc0101m000) session. The activities are sorted by the earliest start time and hence, no activities are available to fill the slack.

The process of handling slack is:

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