Difference between revisions of "Sponsored Development: Resource Assignment & Scheduling"

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==Software & Database Requirements==
 
==Software & Database Requirements==
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[[Category:Projects and Tools]]

Revision as of 17:43, 20 April 2010

Status: Initial proposal being developed 17 April 2010

ADempiere has the ability to define resources as products, assign those resources for periods of time and sell the resources on orders. There are a number of limitations with the current model identified in forum posts. This development proposes to fix and enhance the scheduling and definition of resources to include a wider generic set of use cases that can cover a number of business requirements.

Project Definition

This project will develop the software and database changes required to upgrade the scheduling functions.

Use Cases

Equipment Rentals

House Supplies Inc sells home renovation supplies to home owners and renovation contractors. They also rent construction tools and equipment for short term use. These tools can be picked up at the various store locations. The rentals are typically for 4 hours but can be extended for as long as necessary. There is a maximum charge per day and week. Customers fill out a rental agreement and supply a credit card which is charged with a deposit when they pick up the tool. When the tools are returned, the deposit is refunded and the rental fees are charged. For availability and pricing, customers call the store and a clerk verifies the availability of the tools.

House Supplies needs to know what equipment it has in store, whether it is available for rent, how many of a particular tool it has available, which customer has which tool rented and when it is expected back, which customer is next on a waiting list for a particular tool. The clerk should also be able to check the status of tools at other store locations. Tools need to be tracked by a unique bar-code which identifies the make, model and serial number of the tool. Tools need to be taken off-line for repair occasionally and, eventually, the used tools are sold at a steep discount.

Flight School

Happy Landings Flight College provides professional flight instruction to pilots who are looking for a career in aviation. The college runs a fleet of aircraft and has a staff of instructors. With hundreds of students, the college operates 24/7 and has two full time schedulers to manage the students’ bookings. Depending on the student’s stage of training, each flight will require one or more of an instructor, an aircraft, or a simulator. Typically, students will reserve an aircraft and an instructor for a two hour booking which results in 1.3 hours of flight time and a .2 hour ground briefing.

In addition to the student pilots, Happy Landings has a large number of private pilots who are not on the career path but who like to fly for fun. These people book themselves on-line by selecting the aircraft they want to fly and, occasionally, the instructor they want to fly with.

The on-line booking system allows the schedulers, students and pilots to see which aircraft, instructors and simulators are available and to make bookings. The system will only show the aircraft and instructors relevant to that student. Aircraft are only identified by type (C-150), not specific call signs (C-ABCD) unless the aircraft has some unique capability. Instructors are identified by name. Bookings are reserved with a credit card.

To facilitate the training, the system enables repeat bookings, for example, every Monday at 10:00 hours for two hours, this aircraft type and this instructor can be booked for a number of weeks or months in advance. Bookings can also be cancelled and moved to new times. At any time, a student can verify their future bookings and the system will e-mail them when any changes are made.

When making the bookings, the students or schedulers typically are looking for an aircraft type and one or two specific instructors. For example, Student Mary needs to fly a generic C-150 aircraft with Instructor John or Ted – when is the next available slot?

Prior to the flight, the student or pilot approached the Dispatch desk where they fill out an on-line form with the details of the flight they intend to take. In the dispatch process, the dispatcher checks the student’s qualifications, verifies the correct instructor authorizations, verifies the method of payment, pre-authorizes a credit card, assigns a specific aircraft tail number and provides the student with the keys to the plane. After the flight, the student completes the on-line form with the flight times and returns the keys to dispatch. Dispatch prints an invoice and takes payment.

Aircraft have routine maintenance every 50 hours of use and occasionally become unserviceable. At any time, Dispatch needs to know which aircraft/instructors are airborne, what the intended flight was, when they are due back and which aircraft are available for dispatch.

Hotel

A hotel has 500 rooms in six different categories based on the bed size, number of beds, smoking or non and suites. Customers can access the availability of the rooms at the hotel on-line and can request availability of rooms that meet their requirements and date range. Reservations can be made on-line with a credit card. Block bookings are also possible. When the customer checks in, the booking is converted to a specific room (room 1101). The customer pays on checkout and is provided an itemized bill of their stay.

Consultancy

A consultant company with a number of in-house consultants provides professional services to clients by project and by hour. Most of their work is short term problem solving. When a customer calls, the best available consultant is dispatched to solve the issue. The rest of the business involves project work based on Request for Proposals from government and business clients. The consultant company provides their staff full-time or part-time in support of these projects and bills the client based on the total hours per consultant. Reports of assignments and time-tracking provide back-up to support the number of hours billed.

Functional Requirements

New: Identifying resources as summary (generic) or specific.

Ability to view resource usage and availability.

New: Ability to view combined resource availability - show/find times when multiple resources are available at the same time. (Conference room, projectionist, translator and catering).

New: For generic resource, show/find how many are available at any time.

Prevent assignments beyound resource capacity.

New: Need dispatch functions where generic resources are changed to specific resources on confirmation.

New (currently broken): Tie resource assignment to an order line. Ensure uniqueness (one order per assignment). Ensure deletion if order line deleted.

Allow assignments without orders (simple time tracking without consequence).

New: Include resource assignment in forecast.

Need to be able to move resource assignments in time.

Need to be able to change assigned resources.

Need to track actual (billable) usage versus planned (ordered) usage.

Assignments can be copied, moved, made recurrent.

GUI Drag and drop scheduling - assignments have handles and can be copied, moved, resized. Zoom +/- schedule New: E-mail notification of schedule (to customer and resource). Calendar notification (? accept, tentative, no)

New: Resources can view own assignments and set availability. Resources can make appointments.

Test Cases

Software & Database Requirements