Dynamic response to planned work interruption
I work in a very dynamic manufacturing/ R&D environment. I am working a schedule for some new work on the production line and I am needing to factor in planned equipment downtime. There is a set chunk of time when certain equipment is not available, however that period of time is not the same for each piece of equipment. The scope and tasks need to complete the work i am planning can have a tendency to shift from day to day as new learnings and unplanned events occur. Is there a way to tell a specific task: if any part of it would be occurring during a shutdown period then for it to not start until the shutdown period has finished, otherwise refer to it's normal dependencies? So far when i can only get it to start after the shutdown period or in conjunction with it.
My current work around has been to load the shutdown days into the "holidays" for that specific project but then i can't count weekends for any tasks that could be potentially occurring around the shutdown and that throws off the days too. Also that doesn't allow me to assign specific tasks to the shutdown tasks for the specific equipment impacted.
Answers
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It sounds like you're using project sheets with Dependencies Enabled... so that Smartsheet is using the Predecessor column and driving Start/End/Duration? Right?
If so then you've probably already seen that you cannot write formulas or use automations to change the Predecessor or Start/Finish columns automatically. You can't use Data Mesh or Bridge or the Smartsheet API either, they won't update Predecessors.
In that case, I think your best bet is insert tasks for each shutdown period, for each piece of equipment, and then add a predecessor to tasks that use that equipment for each shutdown task. That will push your tasks as you need, while retaining the weekend and holiday times and scheduling around them. You could get creative with a helper column formula that reads through the list of shutdown tasks and finds the ones with matching equipment type and date ranges, so you would know what predecessors to apply. But it may be more hassle than just eyeballing your list of shutdown tasks and picking the right ones.
