DELMIA Ortems new feature Secondary resources may be managed at finite capacity in PS environment as it was already offered in MP environments

PD 2026-01-29

To present this important new feature, nothing is better than an easy example highlighting before versus after situation.

On the following screens, a machine Gantt chart is displayed on the top, while below is a Capacity Requirement diagram for Secondary Resources displaying load rate.

Here is the plan after running a Forward Scheduling optimization not taking Secondary Resource capacities into account:

We can notice that JOUR secondary resources is quite always overloaded. Secondary resources are not a constraint: the result of the scheduling optimization is the same with and without them.

As a reminder, to be able to display overloads, it is required to set a capacity calendar on the concerned resources (primary or secondary). Their usual capacity calendar has to be defined in Data Module while exception calendars may be assigned for some given periods from Planning program in “Capacity” > “Secondary resource special capacity” chart.

The same plan after a new Total Forward Scheduling optimization taking into account Secondary Resource capacities:

We can notice here that some operations got their start date automatically fixed (small blue triangle ). This is because we control the load by postponing some operations.

We can also notice here that the load is leveled on the 14 first days.

Why?

because for this environment, I set, in “Optimization” > “Constraint configuration”, the Secondary Resources as an optimization constraint:

the Secondary Resources horizon to 14 buckets of 1 day. For information, this horizon can be set by X buckets, each bucket being defined as Y units of time (for my example, X=14, Y=1 and Unit = Day):

That means my objective is to control the load each day for 14 days.

After these 14 days, there is no change: Secondary Resource is no longer a constraint impacting the scheduling optimization results.

Note that it is also possible to manage secondary resources at finite capacity without scheduling the plan:

on demand by clicking on menu “Optimization” > “Secondary resources at finite capacity”:

Clicking on “Secondary resources at infinite capacity” no longer takes into account the capacity of all the secondary resources.

automatically, further to interactive dynamic changes to the plan by selecting “Full load leveling” from “Options” > “Configuration” in “Interactive actions” tab:

This feature is already available in DELMIA Ortems 2020 Refresh 4

downloadable from https://www.3ds.com/support/download/