Scheduling

Definition
Establishment of amount of work to be done and the time when each element of work will start or the order of the work. The determination of time that should be required to perform each operation and also the time that should be required to perform the entire series as routed.

 The objective is to achieve maximum utilization of resources i.e. men, machines and capital , so that men and machines are not idle.

Gantt charts
One of the most important methods for scheduling some projects Represent the progress of the planned work Rectangular chart divided by parallel horizontal and vertical lines Columns of the chart into time units which can be hours, days, weeks, years etc., Breadth of each column proportional to the duration of the operation/activity.

 Various activities /operations are listed in rows from top to bottom Number of ways to present the scheduled and actual progress in the work It can be shown by a bar or line drawn within the uprights of the activity symbol, the length showing the amount of work completed

Gantt chart
Let there be an operation A which should start on fifth day of a month, finish on 14 day, and another operation should start on 9th day and finish on 20th day of the same sequence. It is observed that only 50% of the work is completed for A up to 9th day while operation B was only 30% complete up to 11th day. Represent it by a Gantt chart.

Gantt chart
DAY 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

OPERATION A OPERATION B

Actual Scheduled

Progress up to 11th day Actual

Scheduled

Gantt chart
The chart clearly shows that performance of operation A is lagging behind by two days on 11th day, whereas operation B is ahead of the schedule.

Limitations of Gantt chart

The relationship between various operations cannot be shown. With modifications in schedule, the necessary changes are very difficult to incorporate in Gantt chart.

Net works
The management has to plan and control a varieties of tasks and situations. Some of the situations are repetitive but others are non repetitive. E.g. introduction of a new product in the market, change of plant location, lay out or re layout etc.,

 These situations have some special characteristics, namely Fixed starting and finishing time Non repetitive Numerous and un enumerable operations or activities involved in the completion of the tasks Duration of the activities can be i) accurately determined ii) approximately determined

 In order to accomplish the tasks or situations, termed as projects, efficiently the management must plan and schedule mainly on the basis of experience with similar projects applying their judgement to the particular conditions of the project at hand.

CPM/PERT
CPM this technique can be used in situations where duration of various activities can be accurately visualized from past experience. PERT - this technique can be used in situations where duration of various activities cannot be determined review the project periodically and then course of operations according to the changes

Objectives of PERT and CPM

To complete the project within the stipulated period Best possible utilization of the resources at disposal. To reduce the costs of set up and change overs Minimization of work in process inventory investment

Network
Project involves many activities. Involves the study in terms of precedence and succession of various activities Analyse the resources available to perform the activities Evolve some better and quicker plan to complete the work drawing a diagram showing the position of activities from start to finish of the project Used to study the consequence of any delay in any activity on the entire project

Characteristics of network analysis

It avoids unnecessary penalty, project should be finished on due date. The activities can be performed only in some predetermined order and some activities can start only when work on some others is already complete. Cost associated with any activity is directly proportional to its duration. There can be bottle necks and the resources available are limited There are a number of points/nodes each connected to one or points by routes or edges

 Activity denoted by an arrow - involves expenditure of resources as well as time - tail represents start and head represents end of the activity Event Denoted by circle - point of time indicates the start and completion of an activity - does not involves any expenditure on resources and time

Time estimates to find the critical path

Earliest start time Earliest possible time for an event to indicate the start of an activity Latest finish time Latest time by which an event should finish otherwise the activity subsequent to the event to be delayed

Concept of slack and float

Slack

freedom for scheduling or to start any event always associated with an event and is calculated by its EST & LFT any event for which the slack time is zero is called critical event
Float

The maximum amount by which the duration time of an activity can be increased without increasing the total duration of the entire project

PERT
Project Evaluation review Technique Various technique for planning and control CPM applied when the duration time for each activity can be determined accurately from experience or past records/work study methods In present environment, the exact time to complete the order is difficult to determine In such situations PERT can be applied

 PERT provides the confidence limits for the expected duration of the project. The basic difference in the methodology of CPM and PERT is that CPM gives more importance to the activities whereas PERT lays more emphasis on events

Features of PERT
Draw the net work for the project Three time estimates namely Optimistic, Normal and Pessimistic time are estimated for each activity to take account the presence of uncertainties. Optimistic Time(t1) the shortest possible time to complete an activity without any provision for delays or set backs. Normal time (t2) this is the time most often required to perform an activity. Here it is assumed that the situation is almost normal with few setbacks

 Pessimistic time(t3) It is the longest time for the accomplishment of an activity under adverse conditions. This time corresponds to abnormal situations where everything has gone wrong. This time is very difficult to determine. The three time estimates are used to calculate the expected time for each activity Critical path and clack time are computed. The sequence of activities which has maximum expected time for the completion of the project determines the critical path. The three time estimates are provided by a person who is in charge of the operation and the values are generally based on his judgment and experiment

 The expected time are assumed to follow a beta distribution

E(t) = (t1+4t2+t3)/6

Draw a PERT diagram and find the expected time

Activity 1-2 1-3 Optimistic Time 30 8 Normal Time 44 12 Pessimistic Time 54 16

2-3
2-4 3-4 4-5

1
2 8 14

2
3 10 22

3
5 12 25

Limitations of PERT
Expected time and the variance are only the approximately values which may not be true in many situations The assumption of beta distribution is difficult to be valid in process

Resource allocation
In every production enterprise resources are limited and the management always wants to allocate these to various activities PERT and CPM provide valuable guidelines for most systematic and economic allocation resources viz labour, capital and equipment The presence of slack and float for any event or activity enables the production manager to delay that activity for some time and use these resources to some urgent activities

 The policy of the organization is not to waste man hours, materials should be available at the desired time and specified quantity so that the work is not held up and the plant, equipment and the space should be used to its full capacity. The resource allocation procedure consists of two main activities namely resource smoothing and resource levelling

Resource levelling
Many activities in a project requires varying levels of resources Overall resources of the organization are limited but these should not be below the maximum amount of resources needed to perform an activity out of all activities in the process

 In resource levelling process whenever the availability of resources are less than maximum requirement the only resource is to delay that activity which have larger float. If 2 or more activities require same resources then the activity with minimum duration is chosen for resource allocation

Resource smoothing
The time scale version of various activities and their resource requirement along with corresponding floats is used for resource smoothing The period of maximum demand of resources are located and the activities according to their float values are shifted for balancing the resource needs and availability.

Main steps in resource allocation

Resource requirement for each activity are listed for each item of resources i.e. man, machines, material and space etc., The category wise availability of different resources with respect to quantity and time is also listed The allocation of resources lying on the critical path are given top priority but for non critical activity some compromising approach can be used