Project 2000. Material Resources and Resource Contour Availability, страница 3

To specify a Variable consumption rate, the user enters the assignment Units followed by a forward slash and a valid time unit. The resulting value will have the form “<units> <Material Label>/<time unit>”. For example, if the Material Label is “gallons” and the user enters assignment Units of “4/hr,” the resulting assignment value will be “4 gallons/hr.” In this example, if the task has a Duration of 2 days and days are defined as 8 hours, the total assignment Work will be calculated as 4 gallons per hour times 16 hours, or 64.

Regardless of whether the consumption rate is Fixed or Variable, in the timephased assignment, the total calculated assignment Work will be spread across the timephased segments according to the assignment’s preset contour, just as for a work resource.

Consumption Rate Examples

The following example illustrates a material resource assigned at a Fixed consumption rate with a Flat work contour, as it would appear in the Task Usage view:

Figure 6

The next example duplicates the above assignment, except a Front-loaded contour has been applied:

Figure 7

The following example illustrates a material resource assigned at a Variable consumption rate with a Flat work contour:

Figure 8

Scheduling Issues and Calculations Related to Material Resources

Calendars

Material resources do not have a resource calendar. Material resources are scheduled according to the Project Calendar, unless a task calendar is assigned to the task, in which case the material resource is scheduled according to the task calendar.

Effect of Task Types

Task types affect only material resource assignments that have a Variable consumption rate. Behavior according to task type setting when a field is edited by the user is summarized as follows:

Table 1

This is the only case where material resources are not treated like work resources with respect to task type. The assumption is made that users will regard the Work value as a function of Duration and Units.

Effect of Effort Driven Setting

The Effort Driven setting has no direct relationship to material resources, because the Work value for material resources is not included in total task Work. Thus, if a material resource is assigned or removed, there is no effect either on task scheduling or on the assignments of any work resources.