Can MS Project do this?

Question

Scenario:

-Remodeling Company (could be anything, really).

-A date for delivery, or even the date work will start is established when job is sold..

-Job involves (as you'd expect) labor and materials. There is a profit margin for each.

-A job contains all of these.

-Now, a PM enters in all these things into Project(I hope); Things like start date, how many of each part number (product) were sold.

-There are what MS Project calls 'materials' (consumables like wood, tile grout, etc.) but there are also materials that are things-like a sink, or a heater, etc.

Here is where it gets tricky...

-Each material is either an in-stock item, or one that has to be acquired/ordered. Everything that is not in stock has a 'lead time' that it will take to get that part in (not counting returns due to damage, wrong item, etc.).

-This data once entered needs to be available to the PM immediately, as he/she now can see if it is possible to (A) start on time, and (B) get the job done in time.

(example: If the project was sold as taking 2 weeks, starting in 1 week, what if a product has a lead time of 4 weeks from now? And we haven't even talked about during a long (calendar) project not needing to have every single part on site the first day of the project, but I digress)

-As time goes on, each ordered part/material will thus have a deadline. A date by which the parts had better have been ordered.

-Can MS Project (Pro, Server, etc.) create an alert/email with the details for each 'at risk' part? This would be based on when the part was entered as ordered, and whether entered as delivered.

-Can MS Project deal with profit (Cost/Retail, etc.) margins of consumables and parts?

-How would I deal with keeping inventory accurate? Does MS Project always use an MSSQL database that can be accessed by another app to handle entering in inventory changes?

-Can a report be created on demand addressing those parts/tasks incomplete and when they will cause the project to be at risk?

-Estimates? Estimates of profit (based on parts, materials, etc.)?

Basically, everything. :)

-Icing on the cake? Having MS Project available via the web, in the field. Probably just to look at inventory, where resources are for a given week, and to see more detail on an 'at risk' item once one of the alerts above has been received.

My background: MS developer, VB & VC#/VC++ and really good with SharePoint. A master at Excel (VBA programmer, interfaces, db connectivity, etc.), and I've only used MS Project in stand-alone mode, and only topically.

Thoughts?

TIA!

Answer 1

Firstly Project is not a job costing tool, or a parts inventory tool. There is no reason that functionality can't be added, but it's not out of the box functionality. If I was doing this I would list all parts in Excel along with lead times, then use VBA or manual methods to capture required dates from Project and so calculate order dates in Excel.

People likely to work with parts etc are very unlikely to have good Project Skills, so keeping them away from Project is a very good idea! Reporting on parts etc can easily come from Excel.

Remote access from site can be via VPN or if neededing a web approach then SharePoint based Excel Services.

Project can certainly do the rest.