Introduction¶

About this guide¶

This guide describes how parts can be associated with activities, resources and depots; and how this affects the schedule produced by the Dynamic Scheduling Engine.

Introduction¶

A resource may require a part in order to perform an activity, and each resource may have a given number of parts. For instance, a washing machine repair engineer may only carry two spare washing machine drums in their van, so it is not possible to do more than two such activities in the day, unless they return to base to collect more.

The following example shows a situation where the two resources have been given 5 parts of a certain type at the beginning of each day. Each activity consumes one part, with the result that each day's route is limited to 5 activities:

Parts are closely related to Tools, which are effectively Parts which are required in order to do an activity, but are not used up when doing the activity. An example would be a lawnmower: it is needed in order to do an activity "cutting the grass", but it is not used up: many lawns may be cut in a day with a single lawnmower.

An example is given below. Only Melissa Lee has a lawnmower, and all the green activities require it. As you can see, she can do many such activities, because the lawnmower part is not consumed. The other activities may be done by anybody, as they have no parts requirement.

Categories of Part¶

There are currently four supported categories of part: individual resource parts, vehicle parts, global parts and shared parts. Each defined 'Part' must belong to exactly one of these categories, with the default being that the part will be a resource part. See the sections later in this document for vehicle, global and shared parts.