Balancing Operations on Working and Nonworking Resources

You can balance operations on working and nonworking resources using the Resource Balancing command.


Before you begin: Open your session content, which should include an organizational resource with three working resources and three systems with operations. A Resource-System scope is required.

The scenario below also applies to nonworking resources.

  1. Select the organizational resource in the tree.
  2. From the Authoring section of the action bar, click Resource Balancing .

    The Resource Balancing panel displays. This is the global panel showing the operations assigned to all the working resources under the selected organizational resource.

    The colored rectangles in the bar chart show the operations assigned to each resource. By default, the operations are represented by blue rectangles. Parallel operations (that is, operations that are done at the same time on a given resource) are represented by red rectangles.

    Tip: You can customize this color in Me > Preferences > App Preferences > Simulation > Process Engineering > Equipment Allocation > Resource Balancing Chart.

  3. From the Authoring section of the action bar, click Resource Utilization Gantt .
    The Gantt chart shows that some of the operations are sequenced, others are not.
  4. Drag an Unloading operation from WorkerA to WorkerB.
    The operation is added to WorkerB.

  5. In the same way, drag another Unloading operation from WorkerA to WorkerC.
    The operation is added to WorkerC. The Gantt chart is also updated to show that the operations are now added to WorkerB and WorkerC.
  6. Sequence the operations in the Gantt chart.



    The bar chart and the information in the table are updated accordingly (total time, utilization, and so on).



  7. Select a rectangle representing an operation in the WorkerA column of the bar chart.
    The rectangle changes from dark blue to light blue and a tooltip gives information about the operation. The operation is also highlighted in the tree.
  8. Right-click an operation.
    A context menu displays, allowing you to create, edit, or delete time analyses, or to modify operation properties.
  9. Create a time analysis on the operation.
    For more information, see the Time-Motion Study User's Guide.
  10. Right-click the operation and select Properties, then change Time mode to Analyzed time in the Properties dialog box.
  11. Right-click the Total Time cell in the table.
  12. Select Time Type Defined on Operation.
    The bar chart is updated to show analyzed time on the operation with the time analysis.