Projects

The purpose of the Projects module is to make it easy to set up a project with activities, lead times, milestones, and other actual or provisional information, so that you can quickly see the possible start date, finish date and lead time.

You can either leave it there and work out the details in individual sales and production orders, or link these orders to your project. In the latter case, you can easily compare the preliminary details with the actual details. This is true both for the planning details and the costs.

Once production files have been created, projects can be scheduled in detail in production files. If you link them to the project you created earlier, you will see the progress of the actual project in the Projects module, complete with hours worked and costs incurred. Project lines linked to an underlying order can be assigned a different color or pattern in the Gantt chart, to make it clear where they originate from.

The Planning module supports the entire process, from design to product assembly and installation. While other Isah modules give you an insight into subprocesses, the Projects module gives you an insight into the entire process. Because this module gives you a complete overview of your project, it is easier to identify bottlenecks and adjust your projects.

From a rough planning to a planning based on up-to-date order information

At the start of a project you will be working with rough estimates, such as a rough plan and budgets. As the project progresses, you can make more accurate estimates, and ultimately the actual results will become available from orders, which you can then link to the project. Each of these project phases has its own planning calculation. You use a plan type to determine which calculation is applicable.

If the sales, production or purchase process has started, you can use the order data to make calculations within the project. If you link one or more orders to a project, you will have a wealth of up-to-date information about the planning, costs and revenues, which gives you even more project monitoring and management opportunities.

Planning graph from the Project lines - planning button

Click the Project lines - planning button to open the graph view of the project planning. The planning graph is displayed as a Gantt chart, giving you a quick insight into the planning progress and any bottlenecks in the planning. You can make changes directly in the planning graph. This enables you to see how any project changes affect the planning.

Capacity overview

When you assign hours to the project, you will want to see how this affects the capacity. Information about the required project capacity and the available project capacity can be found in capacity overviews by capacity group or department. These overviews show how the load relates to the capacity and to the load from orders not related to the project.