Smoothing Production

The main aim of using DTS is to create a balanced production plan that makes optimal use of resources. If you create a schedule simply based on tasks and dependencies, you will usually end up with a plan where the development and production is skewed towards the start of the project, and will most likely not be achievable due to plant, resource and rock mechanics constraints. The schedule will unlikely achieve an optimum financial result, i.e. money spent too early on development of areas where production will only kick in at a much later stage. Almost all schedules need to be smoothed first in order to be executable in practice.

This is where the skills of the planner comes into play. DTS provides some mechanisms that you can use to smooth the production. You can control the schedule by making use of the following:

• targets in conjunction with the Cross Tab view to display where scheduled production falls outside of the minimum and maximum targets
• task constraint types which allow tasks to be delayed, or even specified to start as late as possible
• splitting a task into different sections (distribution) that can individually be scheduled at specific dates
• controlling the production rate of tasks or sections
• change the production quantities of a task per period in the Gantt chart in a similar way to changing cell values in spreadsheets often used for scheduling. This will translate into changes to the sections and production rate of the task.