Scope
We want to change some data/settings in our plan to measure their impacts on the plan and have a wide-scope overview of modification impacting our plan. This may be used as an additional criterion to the performance indicators available in DELMIA Ortems.
Our use case: we want to change the forward scheduling criteria in order to optimize our plan:
To do this, we must therefore save a schedule as a reference schedule: we thus obtain “Reference Start Dates” and “Reference End Dates” for operations (same for Work Orders and Series) that we will be able to compare with the current “Start dates” and “End Dates”.
In the Planning program, decide when you want your current plan becomes the reference plan, and then select menu command Performance > Save reference plan.
The dialog box offers you to configure the feature, and especially to specify which period of the plan you want to save.
Under Start Date, enter the start date-time for the reference plan (default is the start of the horizon).
Under End Date, indicate when the planning period you want to save must end (default is 7 days and the value you enter becomes the default value).
When you have saved a reference plan, the operations / WOs / series included in the period of time you have saved all have reference start and end dates that you can view in their description windows.
Step 2: setting a color that will highlight the impacts on the plan
From the Planning application control ribbon “Op. colors” tab, we select the “Op. advance/delay (reference end date)” color to identify operations that are early (or on time) or late compared with their reference end date.
Result just after our plan is saved as reference plan (all our operations are on time because current end date = reference end date => green color):
Step 3: launching a scheduling optimization
The objective of the reference plan is for you to analyze the progress of your plan as compared with this reference plan. In the Planning application, we modify our criteria configuration for Forward scheduling then we launch a scheduling optimization.
Result after scheduling:
As said previously, this color highlights each operation based on whether it is early (or on time), or late with respect to its reference end date.
Information: you can setup a margin for your reference plan at “Option > Configuration > Display” command menu
Reference: This is the margin used for the WO Advance/Delay (Reference End Date) color and the Op. Advance/Delay (Reference End Date) color.
If you set this field to 0 (no margin), orange is used for WOs / operations with a foreseeable delay, and green is used for WOs / operations that are either on time or ahead of schedule.
If you set a margin, the use of green is the same as above, but orange is used for WO / operations whose planned end date is later than the reference end date + the margin
In any case, pale blue indicates that the operation has no reference end date (was out of the reference plan scope).
Step 4: once the result of your modifications is better than your reference plan
Save your WIP (or save the plan as a simulation) and decide if you make this plan your new reference plan to improve again your plan and so on.
For any questions about this feature, feel free to ask.
