Balancing resource loads and assigning work

In the Graphical Work Week application, you can reschedule and assign work to balance your resources and workload.

About this task

In this example, you created a work list in the Graphical Work Week application that includes all scheduled work and resources for the day shift for this week (Work List XYZ). In the graphical view, you can see that you have too much work scheduled for Monday that requires first class electricians. Your total workload for Monday shows 56 hours of electrical work that requires first-class electricians. However, your total labor hours for electricians on Monday is 40 hours (five labor resources at 8 hours each). You need to move some of the work to next week, and then assign all the work to available resources.

Procedure

  1. In the Graphical Work Week application, open the graphical view for work list XYZ.
  2. Scroll to the Resource chart.
    You notice that the Electrician-First Class entry for Monday is displayed in red, which indicates that more work is scheduled than you have resources to complete it. The text in red reads 56:00/40.00, which indicates that you are over scheduled by 16 hours (56 hours are scheduled out of 40 available hours).
  3. In the Resource chart, select the row for Electrician-First Class. Click the Filter Work Orders Based on the Selected Resources button.
    The Activity table filters the work records to show the electrical work.
  4. Select the check boxes for multiple work records to reschedule. You can also draw a border around the work in the Activity chart, or use Shift-click to select multiple records.
  5. Right-click on the segments and select Set to Day. Choose a date next week to schedule the work.
    To be able to schedule the work next week, those dates must be included in the schedule on the Work tab.
    If the work records have date constraints (Start No Earlier Than or Finish No Later Than dates), the constraints appear in the Activity chart, on either side of the work segment contraints.
  6. Scroll down to the Resource chart and check your load balance.
  7. Repeat steps 3-6 until all load balances appear blue.

What to do next

Assign work to resources.
  1. In the Activity chart of the graphical view, select the work segment that you want to assign.
  2. In the Resource chart, double-click the date cell for the labor or crew resource that you want to assign the work to.

If all of the selected work (or work that has a long duration) cannot fit into a single shift, it is automatically split between days for that resource.

Assignment records are automatically saved to the database. If the mxe.skd.syncwodates property is set to 1, work order changes are also saved back to the work records. The schedule start and end dates are updated to match the new assignments.