Prestige Scheduler Version 5 On-Line Documentation (preliminary)

Downtime Proforma

Creating a new proforma

Down-time proformas are used to define typical or default shift patterns that will apply to one or more board resources. When you define a board resource, you attach one or more downtime proformas to that resource. The proformas attached to a resource collectively define the times into the forseeable future when that proforma will be non-productive. The proformas establish the rules that determine the size and position of downbars drawn on the EPB and which define the times when the resource is unavailable for production.

Normal down-time proformas are created for a typical week. Within that week, you draw rectangles to define areas (time/day start and finish boundaries) that are either productive or non-productive. To draw a rectangle, you use your mouse to start a drag at a corner of the rectangle you want to define. To start a drag, press and hold-down the left mouse button at a corner of the rectangle to be drawn. Drag your mouse to the opposite corner of the rectangle (time boundary) you want to define, then release your mouse button. Your rectangle shows with black border lines. The starting date/time and the finishing date/time for your rectangle are also shown.

The screen shot below shows a rectangle that defines a date/time boundary beginning on Monday at 07:00am (top left of rectangle) through to Friday at 5:00pm. Note that the time line caption numbers refer to the boundary to their left.

When you first select the option to add a new proforma, the entire week is rendered as "downtime", which is represented in a grey colour. Uptime (productive time) is shown in green. So, to define the drawn rectangle as uptime, you press the [Set as Uptime] button.

Here is the result: We have now defined the rectangle drawn above as uptime. So far, this "New Proforma" is defining a shift pattern that sees the resources to which this proforma will be attached being available each week-day from 7am till 5pm.

Now, what if we want to have the Friday shift finish at 3pm rather than 5pm?

To do this you just need to draw another (small) rectangle that defines the time boundary from 3pm Friday to 5pm Friday, then press the [Set as downtime] button to set your drawn rectangle to represent downtime. Here's the result:

Time Scale

The default time scale (the amount of time represented by one grid cell) is one hour. This is fine if the shift-patterns you want to define start and end on the hour. You can increase the definition (or reduce the granularity) by adjusting the time scale:

You can increase the definition down to a 15-minute time scale.

Apply Date

The apply date allows you to specify a finite date range to which the defined proforma will apply. This is useful when you intend to change your shift pattern from a known point in time. In this case, you would define two proformas; one that defines the current pattern and runs from now until the shift change and another that defines the new shift pattern and has a start date the determines the changeover date.

Special cases

There are always going to be those times when the typical doesn't apply. Public holidays are a good case where special proformas are required. The first point to remember when defining proformas that represent special holidays is that downtimes defined by different proformas can overlap, when attached to a common resource. What this means is that a special proforma that blocks out an entire day can overlap or in effect override any typical downtime already defined by a standard proforma. Here is a possible proforma for the Christmas public holiday period:

Normally, the typical week defined by a proforma includes EVERY day in the week. Hence, by default, all days are "ticked". A special proforma can be created that defines only some of the days in the week. The proforma above is a special proforma that defines a Christmas break for 2006. It has a very restricted "Apply Date" range. We have also chosen, in this case to restrict the definition to just the specific days of the week that we know will apply.

Restricting the days to which a proforma can apply has other possible uses too. Using downtime to define maintenance periods is a good case in point.

Although we have drawn downtime above to apply from Monday through Friday, only Monday is defined in this case. The proforma will therefore only create downtime for Mondays from 9:00am till 2:00pm. If you want to move your maintenance to Tuesday, you can do so by unselecting Monday and tick Tuesday instead. Don't forget that the menu option to recreate downbars from proformas must be run before any changes will be seen in the actual downbars generated.