Network planning

Maintain the following data in order to carry out a network planning:

  • General project data
  • Activities by project
  • Activity relations
  • Capacity load table codes
  • Capacity load tables

A network planning consists of all the activities required to execute a project (but not a budget). An activity may represent one or more operations. Each activity has a specific lead time. The relations within the network indicate which activities depend on each other. Analyzing the network will inform you about the total duration of the project. The method used is the Precedence Method.

The advantages of a network planning are as follows:

  • The project planning is independent of the project structure as recorded in LN
  • A network planning can be generated when the project structure is only partly-defined
  • Network planning offers optimum facilities to monitor the project's progress. If activities are behind schedule, the influence on the project's finish date can be directly calculated and the appropriate measures taken in order to make up for the delay.

When you set up a network planning, the sequence order in which operations and activities are to be carried out is an important aspect. Activities can relate to other activities. They can be executed consecutively or they can overlap.

Depending on the planning method recorded in the Projects (tipcs2101m000) session, you can plan forwards (based on the start date) or backwards (based on the finish date).

The relations between activities determine whether there is any float in the planning. Free float is the number of days by which you can delay an activity without affecting the next activity. Total float is the number of days by which you can delay an activity without affecting the project's start or finish date.

The capacity required for the activity can be distributed over the activity's duration in terms of a percentage of the total capacity via the capacity load table.

You can indicate in the table whether customized operations must be automatically linked to activities when this has not yet been done. If the customized operation cannot be linked to an activity, it will be reported by LN.

The setup time, cycle time, man occupation for setup, man occupation for production, and machine occupation are recorded per operation by means of the Routing Operations (tirou1102m000) session.

The following examples show how the capacity requirements for a project activity are planned:

Example 1: Example 1: Activity has not yet started Example 2: Example 2: Activity has already started

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