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Generate a schedule

When you click Generate, Flow Generative Scheduling attempts to create a level, resource balanced schedule that respects the dependencies, priorities, constraints, and resource shaping that you have provided.

How to generate a schedule

Once you've imported a schedule, you can generate new scenarios of that schedule.

Generating a schedule:

  1. Import a schedule in Flow Generative Scheduling.

  2. In the created playground, select the Baseline scenario and:

    • Add constraints to summaries, milestones, or tasks. Do this in the Schedule tab.
    • Shape resources to manage your project's resources. Do this in the Resources tab.
  3. Click Generate schedule. The scenario is now updated with the generated schedule.

    Experiment with constraints and resource shaping and click Generate when you're ready. Create a scenario and start again with different settings.

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Workflow examples

Below are some workflows to help you experiment with your schedule in Flow Generative Scheduling.

A new delivery date

You need to change the delivery date of the project after the creating the schedule. To see how this impacts your schedule, you modify the finish date of the project.

  1. Duplicate the scenario and select it.

    By duplicating the scenario, and working on the duplicate, you avoid making changes to the scenario with the original finish date. You want to keep this original for reference.

  2. In the Schedule tab, select the Summary for the project.

  3. In the Controls tab, adjust the Finish no later than (FNLT) date to the new date.

    Immediately you can see the schedule update to the new FNLT constraint. Our resource classes are looking a little uneven now, because activities shifted around in response to the date change.

  4. Smooth the schedule by clicking Generate.

Once Flow Generative Scheduling completes the generation process, you can compare this new schedule to the one with the old delivery date.

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To compare two schedules:

  1. Open the Resources tab.

    Tip:

    Set the Overview graph type to Stacked or Stream (set in Customize menu). These types make it easier to compare scenarios.

  2. Select the schedule you generated.

  3. Select the schedule with the old delivery date.

    By alternating between the two schedules, you can visualize the impact of the changed delivery date.

You can also select a resource, flip between the two scenarios and see what's the impact of the changed date.

Trailer delivery

You have created your schedule: set the constraints including the final delivery date, and generated it. But you are now asked to deliver some shots earlier, for a trailer delivery. This means adding a Finish no later date constraint lower in the project hierarchy.

The process is similar to setting a delivery date for the project, but here you want to assign a date to only a subset of the sequences.

  1. As for the delivery date, duplicate the scenario, and select it.

    You want to keep this original scenario for reference.

  2. In the Schedule tab, select a sequence Summary and give it a Finish no later than date in the Controls tab.

  3. Add the same Finish no later than date constraint to as many sequence Summaries as you need.

    If you look at the Resources tab, you can see that the resources utilization is no longer smoothed out, but rather skewed toward the trailer's delivery date you've set.

  4. Smooth the schedule by clicking Generate.

Now that this scenario has been generated, we can compare it to the scenario with the same delivery date but without the additional constraints for the trailer delivery.

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Prioritize some tasks over others

You don't have a hard deadline for some of the work, but still, it would be nice for it to be worked on before other work. If you need something done by a specific date, you would use constraints. But here you only want to assign relative importance to some of the work.

Maybe you know that you will get turnover for some sequences first, so you would like them to occur earlier in your schedule, or maybe you have some hero shots which establish the look for a sequence, and you want those shots to be scheduled earlier.

In these cases, you want to assign a Priority to some tasks.

  1. In the Schedule tab, select an activity.

    You can assign a priority to tasks and summaries.

  2. In the Controls tab, enter a Priority value.

    Priorities are relative values between –1000 and 1000. For example, Flow Generative Scheduling will attempt to schedule a task with a priority of 100 before a task with a priority 50.

  3. Click Generate to create a schedule that now accounts for the set priorities.

    The schedule only prioritizes the tasks when you actually generate the schedule. Compare this to when you set basic constraints on activities, in which case the Schedule and Resources tabs reflect the changes.

Note:

Flow Generative Scheduling tries to schedule a higher priority activity to begin before a lower priority one, but other factors like constraints and start/end dates are weighted heavier during schedule generation. So higher priority is not a guarantee that it will be scheduled before a lower one.

Preparing for early vendor finish

You've asked a vendor to do the roto and paint work on your project. On your schedule, the paint and roto work extend until nearly the end of the project, but the vendor isn't available after a certain date. What would happen if all the paint and roto work was completed in the first two months of the project?

To have some resources complete work earlier:

  1. Duplicate the scenario and select it.

    By duplicating the scenario, and working on the duplicate, you can experiment and keep the original for reference.

  2. In the Resource tab, select the Paint resource.

  3. In the Detail view, set the Latest finish date.

  4. In the Resource tab, select the Roto resource.

  5. In the Detail view, set the same Latest finish date as the Paint resource.

  6. Smooth the schedule by clicking Generate.

Once Flow Generative Scheduling completes the generation process, you can compare this new schedule to the reference.

Notice how the Planned max (maximum number of required artists) varies between the two schedules.

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Free up some capacity before the end of the project

You're juggling with another project, and that project that will start when the current one ends. You know you'll need to free up some animators early to go work on that other project. But how many can you afford to transfer to the other project?

To free up resources early:

  1. As usual, duplicate the scenario and select the copy.

    By duplicating the scenario, and working on the duplicate, you can experiment and keep the original for reference.

  2. In the Resource tab, select the Animation resource.

  3. In the Detail view, enable Ease In/Out.

  4. Since you want to keep a minimum of 20 animators on this project, enter 20 in Min. Resources.

  5. Set Peak Finish to the date when you want to start moving animators from this project to the other one.

  6. Level the schedule by clicking Generate.

You now get a schedule where animation resources slowly diminish to a minimum of 20 animators while allowing you to still deliver on the animation tasks.

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To see how many resources are needed at any time:

  1. Hover over the Detail graph.

    A tooltip shows you how many resources are required that day.

To see the animation tasks on a specific day:

  1. Hover over the Detail graph and the tooltip displays the date.

  2. Click the day to inspect.

    The Task list appears, and displays all the tasks assigned for that day. Each task displays its duration, and how many resource units are assigned to it.

    Tip:

    Click a task to display more information and open it in the Gantt chart of the Schedule tab.

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