PLANTRAC-OUTLOOK Project Management Software

Plantrac-Outlook
Overview

PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK is a highly flexible menu-driven system that is professionally structured for simple, friendly use. If you are familiar with computer-aided Project Management systems, you will find PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK very easy to use. If you have not worked with this type of system before, you will not need a complete course on computer operation.

PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK was developed in 1990 by Computerline Limited to provide Project management with an easy to use, technically effective, and cost efficient solution for Project planning and control. The programs used in the PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK system are based on years of experience of providing computer services to Project personnel who use network techniques for planning, monitoring, and controlling projects.

PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK uses the PIP (Plantrac Integrated Planning) technique for Project planning. PIP is a complete concept of planning, first developed by Computerline in 1979. It is an advanced method that integrates various planning methods, schedules in realistic terms, provides decision making functions, and assists profitability through planning. With PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK, you have easy access to all of the necessary information about your Project. Anyone planning or controlling the project can benefit from knowing such details as:

The earliest date each Activity can start.
The latest date each Activity must start to complete the Project on time.
The earliest date each Activity can finish.
The latest date each Activity must finish to complete the project on time.
The float on each Activity (i.e., the number of days leeway on each Activity).
Critical path (i.e., identifying and highlighting those Activities where any slippage will delay the completion of the project).

The effect changes have on the project (i.e., repercussions on changes to plan, advances, or slippages of time on Activity).
Schedules based on:

1. The minimum number of resource excesses, or
2. Never exceeding the available resources.

The cost of any possible schedule.

Armed with the above details, meaningful and timely decisions can be made about your project, and communication with superiors, subordinates, contractors, and subcontractors will be based on relevant information.

Planning the Project

To use PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK, you must first have a plan of your Project. The plan includes any relevant information about your Project, such as listing the Activities to be carried out, identifying dependencies of one Activity on another, estimating the duration or resources of each Activity, etc. The plan may be a barchart or network, or a combination of each. You may identify Activities in any number of ways, such as by department or subcontractor, and you can allocate by cost centre. In addition, you may also include details such as the resources required by each Activity, any dates you must comply with, any priorities to be given to an Activity, and so on.

In PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK, you may input as much or as little information as you wish. You have the capability to add, delete, or change any information at any time. Reports on data may be requested at any stage.

Scheduling

Once your plan is in PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK, you can request various types of schedules to be calculated.

Time Analysis calculates a schedule that assumes that there are no resource constraints (i.e., the earliest possible schedule). It also highlights the Critical Path of the Project. Time analysis is the heart of the system and must be carried out prior to any other analysis.

If you specify resources in your plan, you may show the availability of these resources and then use the Resource Aggregation feature to calculate, from your Time Analysis schedule, the resource requirements period by period.

Print options allow you to look at the Resource Requirement profile and compare it to the Resource Availability profile. This allows you to see if you need more or fewer resources and whether or not you can meet your end date. This information is also useful for examining and re-planning your Project.

There are three other scheduling options available in PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK. At your request, PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK can calculate a schedule that meets your end date but minimizes (Resource Level) on any excess resource requirements. If these resource excesses are still unacceptable, you may use Resource Limited analysis to calculate a schedule which will never require any more resources than you have available. Thus, the project end date will be moved back to allow for resource constraints.

Finally, you may schedule resources according to the level of work being done on the project. Activity duration and schedule will be driven by Resource consumption.

Costing Facilities

PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK includes two costing facilities. You may choose either or both.

Method 1 allows you to calculate costs based on resources required, resources available but not required, working day and non-working day costs, and the cost per Activity.
PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK will also hold your own estimate of costs (budget), period by period, and you may compare those estimates with the costs that PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK has calculated from your schedule and budgets. After your project start, you may tell PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK the actual costs incurred, period by period, and compare this with the planned cost and/or budget.

Method 2 allows you to specify a total cost to each Activity and thereafter report the percentage of cost incurred against each Activity.

Reporting

To look at schedules, PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK has an option for Reporting. This allows you to select from a list of the types of Activities available. It also provides a list of information by which you may sequence your reports: up to five sequences per report. You may then choose to see the results in a preset format, or you may easily design your own format. For example, you can choose all Activities that occur between certain dates, sequence it by department, and then output just the details you want to see.

To look at resource requirements, PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK contains an option for Resource Reporting. This allows you to look at the requirements and availability of all or individual resources. It presents this in Histogram or Tabular form and highlights resource excesses. The periods for which the information is provided and the duration are entirely your choice. For example, you may see the requirements for 'Fitters' for a particular year on a weekly basis. You may also see this information as cumulative quantities. You can see the Histogram or Tabular report as a Tabular report or barchart, with user defined page sizes.

To look at the results from cost analysis, PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK provides a Cost Reporting option. This allows you to look at a breakdown (i.e., Resources, Working Day, Overhead) of project costs, period by period, and to look at comparisons of actual costs, planned costs, and budget. You may also look at the comparisons in Histogram form. Similar to resource prints, you may have the information in cumulative form and also choose to see it on the screen, printer, or plotter.

Once a Project is started, you have a simple method for reporting your Project's progress to PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK. This progress may be in the sequence of your original plan or not.

PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK can reflect the real situation on the Project. Any analysis you do after your progress report will take into account the actual progress reported.

Decision Points

PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK goes further than just providing the essential features of a good project management system. Decision Points are placed strategically to give you various options for arriving at a good plan. Some of these options allow you to:

Easily choose a different format for printed dates.
Use a wide range of different calendars (up to 9999) within your project. Each calendar expresses the number of working days in the week, the start day of the week, and planned holiday dates. Individual calendars can be associated with a complete Project, a Subproject, or separate Activities within a Subproject, this multi-calendar capability especially facilitates the use of PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK for contracts where the working week starting day varies, or when you need to see the effect on a project of working a shorter week - possibly for only parts of the project; to see the affect of different or no holiday dates.

Interface up to 100 Subprojects together.
Available and required resources can be scheduled for up to eight years.
See the resource requirements and costs of each Project separately, or you may look at them as a total.
Create Libraries of common Activity sequences for faster Project creation by merging files and for tailoring to the specific Project.
See a logic drawing or barchart representation of your Project on the screen or in a report. This feature is an invaluable aid in re-planning a project quickly and effectively.

PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK is a well established Project planning package that is used by very experienced Project planners and by people new to the field of project planning. PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK is a powerful and comprehensive planning tool which is the choice of many companies around the world. We are confident that the features and benefits of PLANTRAC- OUTLOOK will more than suit your planning needs as well.