Using SAS/OR for project management?

[MyNameHere]

(Please direct me to a more appropriate forum topic if there is one.)

Is anyone using SAS/OR to do project management? I mean for managing something like software development or an internal audit.

For instance, a PhUSE paper from 2008 described project management using SAS/OR.

Does the PROJMAN interface that the paper mentioned still exist? Is there something better now?

If you are using it for project management, I would be glad to hear about your experiences.

Thanks very much!

[sasgac · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Yes, you can use SAS/OR for Project Management. The project management system in SAS/OR includes the CPM, GANTT, and NETDRAW procedures. The project scheduling engine, the CPM procedure, provides extensive support for time and resource constrained scheduling, while the GANTT and NETDRAW procedures seamlessly integrate with the CPM procedure to produce Gantt charts of the schedule and Project Network diagrams. While the PROJMAN system is no longer available, it was built using the underlying project management procedures. The PM procedure provides an interactive version of the CPM procedure. In addition, the project management system also provides functionality for EVM (Earned Value Management) including analysis and KPI reporting.

The Project Management system has been used in a variety of scenarios including project scheduling, project tracking, resource allocation, production scheduling etc. CPM supports project work shift scheduling including user defined work shifts (at any level of time granularity), employee calendars and holidays, actuals, baselines, skill levels, preferences, and substitution of resources (resource pooling). CPM also supports precedence, resource capacity, and time alignment constraints and provides the user with a wide variety of controls for modeling different resource scenarios including aggregate resources (for costing), alternate resources, auxiliary resources, supplementary resources, resource driven durations, negative resource requirements, activity splitting etc. CPM’s resource capacity planning capability is well suited for gap analysis, with its ability to isolate resource shortages that extend schedules. Along these lines, CPM can be used to perform a critical path analysis to assist with project crashing. CPM can model hierarchical constraints (parent/child) necessary for composite tasks, work centers etc. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) codes can be generated and the resulting WBS can be displayed by the Netdraw procedure. In addition to calendars at the activity level, it also supports calendars at the resource level be it the plant, machine, line etc. The Gantt procedure integrates with CPM to easily chart the output schedule.

Hope this helps.

[MyNameHere]

Thanks, @sasgac! As a SAS employee, do you have knowledge of SAS customers who are using SAS/OR for PM? Or should I submit another question?

[sasgac]

Hi, While I cannot divulge customer information, you can search the following resource for publicly available  success stories, sasgf papers etc. using a keyword (e.g. CPM) 

https://www.lexjansen.com/

Hope this helps!

[MyNameHere]

Thanks! I found several useful articles there.