The WORKSIM® software is a knowledge based scheduling system that captures all relevant workload data including task precedence constraints, task priorities, task durations, resource availability schedules, etc. and, using this data, generates an optimal schedule of selected workloads.
Overview
The WORKSIM® software uses captured workload data to generate schedules and reports that allow users to analyze and resolve all resource or other scheduling conflicts among the tasks and resource availabilities. Generated schedules can be exported to Microsoft® Project or Microsoft® Excel and show, for example, optimal start and finish dates for tasks and resource requirements per hour, shift, day, week, month, or year for all tasks in the scheduled workloads.
The WORKSIM® software’s knowledge based architecture lets you quickly input changes to tasks in response to unexpected changes in the real-world production system. Once changes have been made, simply rerun the software’s scheduling engine and generate a revised schedule showing the changes among all tasks in the workload and the impact of those changes on the overall schedule.
Features
- The WORKSIM® database stores all data and generated schedules for the active WORKSIM® project, allowing users to build comprehensive scheduling projects, save those projects, and make updates to saved project workloads, tasks, resources, and all data associated with those elements.
- The WORKSIM® Scheduling Engine is a resource constrained, finite capacity scheduling system. The engine uses input from the database–i.e., data defined for workload tasks–and simulation and optimization engines to generate sets of feasible workload schedules. Schedules can be exported to Microsoft Project® and MicrosoftExcel®.
- The WORKSIM® Simulation Engine is a discrete event simulation system and is used as the schedule generation mechanism in situations where the task parameters are stochastic. The simulation engine has an animation tool that allows you to visually validate the task production process. The Optimization Engine uses genetic algorithms and simulated annealing to generate schedules that are optimal with respect to the defined performance criteria.
- WORKSIM® Reports allow you to focus on specific aspects of Scheduler findings, analyze the results, and pinpoint areas for improving scheduling times and resource allocations. Reports include resource usage by tasks and their flow times–the real-time required to complete a set of tasks according to the precedence and hierarchical constraints on the task–for items, process templates, and tasks. Some report types can also be exported to HTML or as straight text files.