Understanding Crew Maintenance Schedule Periods
Before you can schedule work for a work crew, you must define the dates that define each work period for which you schedule work. You use the Maintenance Schedule Periods program (P48302) to define the crew maintenance schedule periods, which include the dates that are associated each scheduling period.
Before you can create schedule periods, you must first define schedule pattern codes in UDC 13/SP. When you define a schedule pattern code, you specify the number of days that are associated with each work period for that code by entering the number in the Special Handling field in the UDC table. For example, to define weekly schedule periods, you might create code W in UDC 13/SP, and enter 7 in the Special Handling field for that code.
After you define schedule pattern codes, you can create the crew maintenance schedule periods. You specify the schedule pattern code and the date on which the first schedule period begins, and the system generates all future schedule periods based on these values.
After you have generated the schedule periods, you must specify which of those periods is the current schedule period. Going forward, you can move the current schedule period manually or set up the system to automatically roll to the next schedule period using a batch program.
After you generate the crew maintenance schedule periods, you can associate the schedule with a crew using the Resource Master program. The system uses the dates from the crew maintenance schedule periods to determine the date ranges on the crew scheduling programs so that you can display the current, next, following, and future periods without having to manually enter the date ranges.
A typical schedule period might define weekly work starting on Monday and finishing on Sunday. Schedule periods are user-defined and can be set up to include any number of days, depending on customer requirements.