Planning

The Planning module contains the scheduling information for projects. You use this module to define project plans and the associated activities and milestones.

• Plan

  The planning parameter plans cover the default project plan and details that relate to the external scheduling package, including currency, time unit, and details of code lengths.

• Milestone

  An activity of zero days that usually represents a significant event in the project is called a milestone. In many cases, a milestone is the completion of a phase for a major deliverable. Milestones can be used to trigger invoicing and the calculation of earned value.

• Activity relationships

  An activity relationship indicates that a certain activity (successor) cannot start or end until another activity (predecessor) starts or ends. The activities must be sequenced accurately to provide realistic schedules.

• Baselines

  The baseline is a snapshot of the active plan's scheduled activities' start and end dates.

• External scheduling package

  Project uses external scheduling packages, for example, Microsoft Project to determine scheduling information of the activity structure. You can use this scheduling information for an activity budget and a time-phased budget.

• External scheduling interface

  Export a project to an external scheduling package such as Microsoft Project by using an XML file. After you maintain the project plan in the external scheduling package, you can import the updated scheduling information to .

• Scheduling Algorithm

  A basic option is introduced which enables LN to calculate the critical path, the earliest and latest start and finish dates, and the possible float. On the project, you can now specify if the planning method must be Forward or Backward based on the project start date and finish date. Possible issues are also reported. For example, a conflict between a constraint and an activity relationship.

• Display Critical Path in Gantt Chart

  The Project schedule or Gantt chart functionality has been extended with options to display the critical path. A Constraints check has been added to the setup options to display the constraints as columns. Based on a tools change, it is now possible to set the width of columns and save this setting.

• Enriched External Scheduler Interface

  The Planning Method (Forward/Backward) and the lag of an activity relationship, if expressed as a percentage, are used as part of the external scheduler interface.

• Planning Package Data in Network Planning

  Planning package data is also included when generating network planning. Both the activity types; Work Package and Planning Package are expected to be used as the lowest level of an activity structure.

• View Resource (Un)availability in Project Schedule

  It is now possible to view the resource (un)availability of an employee using the relevant options in the Project schedule (tppss2700m100) session. Free float and Total float time for the Activity can also be viewed in the Gantt chart using the Show/Hide options in the Project schedule (tppss2700m100) session. The options to access the budget information are enhanced. Activity budget information can be accessed from the Gantt view. An activity and budget can be deleted from the Gantt view using the keyboard options. The Delete option is enabled and can be used to delete an activity, relationship, budget line or assignment.

• Additional Information Interface External Scheduling

  The ESP Project Overview displays additional information such as free float and total float time of the activities which can be interfaced between LN and the external scheduling package.

• Job Shop control

  The Project Gantt provides visibility of pegged production orders and the operations. The project schedule allows you to show and access the production orders and operations that are pegged to the project.

• Gantt settings

  You can save (persist) settings for Completions and Constraints. Whatever option has been chosen when you close the Project Schedule session, is reused the next time the session is started.

• External Scheduling Interface information

  The External Scheduling interface related project data can now be viewed from the ESP Project Overview based on task (Activity), task (Activity) relation, calendar, resources and organization breakdown structure (OBS).