Workload leveling (scheduling)

For group planning, workload leveling is used to define the number of groups that must be generated for a combination of planning attributes scheduled in parallel. Workload leveling creates multiple groups for one combination of these attributes. For schedule-based workload leveling, the planned start and finish times of the activities are used to distribute the activities across the groups in a group set.

Schedule-based workload leveling comprises of:

  • Selecting the activities

    Select all the activities for which workload leveling process is to be executed. The selected activities are moved to another group for the workload leveling except:

    • Frozen and firm planned groups
    • Frozen and firm planned activity sets
    • Firm planned activities

  • Sorting the activities

    Sort the selected activities. The first sort criterion is group set. Within each group set the activities are sorted based on start/finish dates. Activities are sorted, based on:

    • Earliest start time
    • Planned start time
    • Latest start time (calculation of the latest start time of an activity is based on the latest finish, the activity duration, applicable calendar, availability type and the time zone).
    • Planned finish time
    • Latest finish time
Note: If the start date is not specified, the value in this field is defaulted as zero. If the finish date is not specified, the maximum possible value is considered. The activities without a start date are always scheduled first in a plan and activities without a finish date are scheduled last.

  • Distributing activities over groups

    The selected activities are distributed across the groups in a group set. Each activity is added to the group with the earliest finish time. The finish time of the group is updated, accordingly. The process continuous until all the activities are added to a group.

    When an activity is shifted or scheduled to an earlier date/time or later date/time, the planned start time and the planned finish time is updated.

Note: If 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 can never start before the earliest start time, specified for the activity.

The process of schedule based workload leveling is:

When the Respect Earliest Start Time check boxes are selected for the service order, the work order and the planned activities in the Resource Planning Parameters (tsspc0101m000) session, an activity always starts at the latest finish time of the group to which the activity is added. At the time of adding activity to a group, if the earliest start time of an activity is not considered, no slack occurs. After the activity is added, the process continues for the subsequent activities.

When the Respect Earliest Start Time check boxes are cleared for service order, work order and planned activities in the Resource Planning Parameters (tsspc0101m000) session, an activity can be started before the earliest start time. Effectively, a slack may occur after adding the activity to a group.