This section describes the significance of resources, the benefits of using groups, how to setup capacity, shifts patterns, shut-downs and holidays.

What is a resource?

The term resource is used identify people and machines whose time is required in your processes. The most important aspects of resources are its name,  its cost to use, its capacity and its class.

A resource name can be anything that is meaningful to you. Each resource must have a distinct name for identification purposes, but otherwise can be anything you like.

The cost of a resource is referring to the cost you charge to a job that uses that resource, typically expressed as £'s per hour. The system uses this cost to calculate costs for particular products and services that make use of the resource. In Match-IT, this is the cost to you for using the resource, not what you may charge your customers. The cost to you is typically made up of direct costs and a contribution to indirect costs. Match-IT is not involved with this distinction, you just tell it how much cost to attribute to to each unit of time of its use. Your accountant can advise on what indirect cost contribution would be appropriate.

The capacity of a resource specifies how many hours a day it is available and when in the day those hours are. The planning system uses this information to load jobs onto the resources in a way that does not overload them. It is also used to determine when multiply resources are available together (e.g. a machine and the operator required to run it). Resource capacity is specified using resource weeks.

The class of a resource is way for you to categorise resources for reporting purposes. There are 2 categories predefined: machine and person. These predefined classes have special significance for the SFDC system.

What is a resource group?

A resource group is a collection of resources that have similar, or identical, capabilities. They are a very powerful mechanism used to provide the planning system with choices. Choices are useful to avoid bottlenecks, the more choices the planning system is given, the more scope it has to avoid bottlenecks. Resource groups have a name, any number of members and each member has a setup and a running capability. Wherever a resource can be specified in a method, a resource group can be specified instead. This informs the planning system that any available member of the group can be used.

A resource name can be anything that is meaningful to you. Each resource must have a distinct name for identification purposes, but otherwise can be anything you like. When grouping people, it's most useful if the name of the group reflects a skill that members of the group posses.

A resource group member is a resource that is part of the group. It represents a choice to the planning system.

A capability is an efficiency ratio for that member within the group. A ratio of 1.0 means 100% efficient. Numbers less than one are less efficient, so 0.5 is 50% efficient, this means that choice would take twice as long as one that was 100% efficient. Numbers greater than one are more efficient, so 2.0 is 200% efficient, this means that choice would take half the time of one that was 100% efficient. A capability can be associated with setup and running. Specifying that a member has a capability of 1 for setup and 0 for running is a way of saying "do not use this member for running". Similarly, specifying that a member has a capability of 0 for setup and 1 for running is a way of saying "do not use this member for setup".

What is a resource week?

A resource week is a specification for the capacity of a resource, or group, or customer, or supplier, or your whole facility, for a week. The principle for specifying capacity in Match-IT is to specify what is usual and then override that with specific weeks that are different. This minimises the information you need to provide the planning system without losing any flexibility. Resource weeks can also be tagged as overtime. Overtime is extra capacity that can be turned on and off as required, either by your manual action or automatically by the planning system when jobs are running late.

Resource weeks start on a Monday and run for seven days. For each day, the number of hours available and the start time can be specified. There can be any number of week specifications for the same week and the same resource. This is the mechanism used to setup shift patterns; for example if you run 3-shifts, there would be 3 resource week records, one for each shift of 8 hours but with different start times (and possibly different cost rates).

Resource weeks associated with customers and suppliers are specifying when they open for business. The planning system uses this information to schedule dispatches to customers and expect deliveries from suppliers. The planning system will ensure you do not dispatch goods to your customers when it knows they are shut. Similarly, it will not ask for deliveries from suppliers when they are shut.

Resource weeks that specify no capacity are the mechanism used to shut resources down for a specified period. The planning system will not use a resource that has no capacity available, it will either wait for it to come back, or find an alternative.

When there are multiple resource weeks associated with the same resource, there can be conflicts. When there are conflicts (i.e. days for with overlapping time specifications), higher priority weeks will mask the overlapping time in lower priority ones. The priority is (highest first):

•non-approved, non-overtime

•normal

•non-approved overtime

•overtime

Non-approved is highest because when it's active it means what-if experiments are being performed, so those mask the norm. Overtime is lowest priority because the presumption is that it's more expensive.