Whatever your line of business, it is very unlikely indeed that your project exists in isolation - today's matrix organisation structure means that it is almost certainly competing for resources with several other projects.
Traditional project management tools happily handle the sequencing of tasks, the assignment of resources and the collection of progress and cost information; they are not good at assisting management in mitigating resource overallocation or identifying the optimal time to undertake additional work.
In contrast, our software provides a highly interactive graphical modelling environment where users can rapidly explore the consequences of current plans and alternative scenarios. The example below shows how standard features of our product QEI Exec can be used in this way:
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In this example, imagine each bar represents the programme of work to build some large complex object (say an aircraft). Each aircraft project has been "condensed" into a single bar carrying a complex time-varying resource load, and the histogram shows the total load for the programme. The dashed line shows the availability for that resource.
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Suppose we now add another aircraft to the programme (top bar) - the load immediately exceeds the availability.
In real life, this either means that we have to accept the overload and accept the associated costs - overtime or additional contract staff for example - or we have to find an acceptable date which produces a demand within the availability
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As the project is a single bar (albeit carrying some very complex resource information) we can simply drag it around until we find a position in which the resource demand is within the availability.
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Example
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Westland Helicopters has been manufacturing helicopters for over 50 years. The bulk of its business is for military equipment, with long programme lead times subject to external influences.
Given the highly skilled and specialised nature of the workforce, it is a continual challenge to smooth out the peaks and troughs of the fluctuating order book in order to provide a steady load on the factory.
This strategic operations planning is handled by a custom application co-developed by PCF and Westland, which is used in the boardroom to evaluate alternative "what if" scenarios based on live data extracted from their SAP manufacturing system. The system aggregates large quantities of operational data and presents it in an easy to understand format. Exploring the consequences of alternative courses of action is then simply a matter of dragging bars and watching resource loads recalculate; this happens on the fly, with no
data summarisation delays.
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Further Information
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Contact us now to arrange a product demonstration or for details
of our no-risk proof of concept service. If you are not based in the UK, we can deliver live demonstrations
to your desktop over the web, with toll-free international conference call facilities.
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