Products > PSOP > Documentation

Compare Usage Profiles Tab

The top of the Compare Usage Profiles tab shows resource utilization and over-allocation for the PSOP schedule and the original P3e schedule.

The height of the curve indicates the resource utilization for a given time. For example, we can see that on a date about halfway between November 25, 2003 and December 7, 2003, the original schedule required a bit more than 30 units. The green part of the curve indicates resources that were available while the red part of the curve indicates over-allocated resources. In other words, the height of the red bar indicates the amount of over-allocation.

The black line at the far right of the plots indicates when the schedule completes. For some projects, there may be activities at the end of the project that do not use any resources so there may be a gap between the resource curves and the black finish line. The black line indicates when all activities, with or without resources assignments, have completed. In this case you can see that the Primavera schedule completes on December 19, 2003 and the PSOP schedule completes on December 2, 2003.

Below the curves are two selection boxes. The Resource selection box contains a list of all the resources used by the project. Selecting one of the resources causes the plots to redraw so they show utilization and over-allocation only for the selected resource. Selecting a resource will also cause the summary table below the plots to include a row with overload statistics for the selected resource. Selecting "Cumulative" shows all resources combined.

In the above example, we see that resource LABORPY has been selected. The plots now show utilization and over-allocation only for this resource. The black line indicates the availabilities for this resource. Note that there is no availabilities line on the cumulative resource plot as it would not make sense (more information...). In this example, the availabilities go down for the 2nd shift of each day. It is common for availabilities to fluctuate in conjunction with a calendar. For example, often resources do not work on the weekends. By choosing a calendar from the Calendars selection box you can cause the plots to show only those days and times that are working times in the selected calendar.

Selecting the Overload Only check-box will cause the plot to show only the red portion of the curve. This can be useful when there is a lot of work and only a little bit of over-allocation. In such cases the over-allocation can be difficult to see unless the rest of the work is hidden.

The plots can be zoomed by placing the mouse cursor over the horizontal or vertical axes of either plot. To zoom horizontally place the mouse cursor over the horizontal axes. The cursor will become a double-ended arrow. If you click with the left mouse button and drag the mouse horizontally you can zoom in to show only a subset of the dates. Similarly, when the mouse cursor is over the vertical axes the cursor will become a double-ended vertical arrow and you can zoom vertically by clicking and dragging up or down.

The bottom of this tab contains a table comparing the schedules.

The Early Start Schedule refers to a schedule in which each activity was scheduled as early as constraints and relationships would allow. The early start schedule does not pay attention to resource utilization or leveling. It is shown for comparison as it is impossible to produce a schedule which finishes any earlier. For the McDonnell Douglas Wing example, the Early Start Schedule has 1,828.77 hours of overload. The Original Schedule, which was produced by the P3e leveler, has 148.95 hours of overload, and the PSOP schedule has no overload. The amount of overload refers to the number of resource hours scheduled in excess of the resource availability. The improvement column compares the PSOP Schedule to the Original Schedule. It indicates that the PSOP schedule saves 148.95 hours of overload and is 16.78 days shorter than the Original Schedule. PSOP improvements are highlighted in yellow.

The duration row indicates how long each schedule required to complete the project. We can see that the Original Schedule required 60.28 days to construct the airplane wing while the PSOP schedule completes the project in only 43.5 days; a savings of 16.78 days.

When a resource is selected in the Resource selection box the table will show an additional row labeled "Resource Overload". This will show how over-allocated the selected resource is in each of the three schedules. The other two rows, labeled "Overload" and "Duration", remain unchanged and indicate values for the entire project.