TimeMaker Matrix Lesson 10 - Overall Load Leveling

TM Matrix Lesson 10 – Overall Load Leveling

Prerequisites:

1. Study Calendar Load Leveling Lesson.

In this tutorial, upon having studied the previous ones, we are going to take a look at how it all comes together in the Work Load. It is presented as this icon of a bar graph.

The purpose of the Work Load function is to show the work load per user and by that allow better planning of current and future work.

When assigning a Production Item to yourself or another, you can define the time which will need to be invested in executing that task. That time is presented at the Work Load section of the Matrix at the bottom. If no time has been entered, the system will assign a default value as the time for that task. The system will indicate that default time as the time for that task, it won’t give a time set by the user since the user didn’t set it. Therefore it’s important for users to set the estimated time for each task or the work load cannot be accurately estimated. The Work Load can also include the time occupied by Meetings, Action List items and e-mails. The estimated time that Action List items and/or e-mails or Meetings will consume are set according to an average per user or per company and each can be shown or hidden by the user.

Clicking on this Work Load button will toggle between showing or hiding the Work Load bar.

Clicking here opens a pull down menu and will present the following options:

Not Show - if this is selected any Production Item where the estimated time was not registered by the user before assigning the task will not be displayed at all in the Work Load bar.

1 Hour – any Production Item without an estimated assigned time will be displayed in the Work Load bar as a 1 hour action.

2 Hours – any Production Item without an estimated time will be displayed as an action of 2 hours time. This is, by the way, the default setting for displaying Production Items with an unassigned planned time.

4 Hours – any Production Item without an estimated time will be displayed as a 4 hour action.

6 Hours – any Production Item without an estimated time will be displayed as a 6 hour action.

User Defined Time – using this function, you can define the time for unplanned Production Items to be displayed. This is done by clicking this little wrench icon. There you can assign hours by adding “h” after the number or minutes by adding an “m” after the number (you cannot do both hours and minutes). After you click “ok” it will display as that.

Now we’re going to talk about what we are actually seeing down at the workload section at the bottom of the Matrix.
We see 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12. These numbers, relative to the bar graph, say how many hours of the day are taken up with work. If the graph is up to 5, for example, then 5 hours are planned for an Item or Items.
The bar graphs with dotted outer borders are the ones with planned time and the ones with solid outer borders are the unplanned times.
So in this example, we see Mary Rose has two hours of unplanned work and then another hour of planned work.
So we can look at any Performer and we can know, “okay this is how many hours are taken up for that day”. Maybe he is quite busy or maybe he has some time for other work to be assigned.
Show On the Side to Planned – this function will display the Production Items with planned execution times next to those with unplanned execution times per Performer. It will display it here as two bar graphs next to each other rather than one accumulation of all the time for the day for the Performer. The bar graph showing a dotted outer border is the one with planned time. The bar graph with a solid outer border is the unplanned time indication. This is useful so you can see the day’s exact planned time accumulation for tasks as well as that with an estimated time accumulation.

Show Full Names – when this is selected the Work Load panel will show the real name of the user. When unselected it will show the TimeMaker username.

Show Time After Name – when this is selected the Work Load panel will show the total time assigned for that day by Production Items. Unselecting will hide the time.

Selecting any item on the Matrix will highlight the corresponding item in the Work Load panel. Hovering over a specific Work Load box will select the corresponding item on the Matrix. Double-clicking the Item on the box in the Matrix or on the Work Load panel will open the item.

And that is your workload overview!