Project Management
Critical Path Method : PROC CPM
The CPM procedure can be used for planning, controlling, and monitoring a project. This procedure takes a model of the project as input and produces a schedule and information on resource usage as output. The procedure produces no printed output but saves the schedule and the resource usage information in SAS data sets, providing maximum flexibility for exploring and presenting the schedule and resource information.
The scheduling capabilities of the CPM procedure provide for a large number of contingencies. You can schedule subject to standard and non-standard precedence, time, and resource constraints. The procedure also provides direct control over the scheduling algorithms with task and resource prioritization, alternate and supplementary resources, customizable workshifts and calendars, and many other features.
For a project that is already in progress, you can incorporate the actual schedule of the activities already completed to obtain a progress update. You can save the original schedule as a baseline schedule and use it to compare against the current schedule to determine if any of the activities have taken longer than anticipated.
Input Data
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The Activity data set contains all activity-related information such as activity name, precedence
information, calendar used by the activity, progress information, baseline (or target schedule) information, resource
requirements, time constraints, and any other activity-related information.
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The Resource data set specifies resource types, resource availabilities, resource priorities, and
alternate or auxiliary resources.
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The Workday data set and the Calendar data set together enable you to specify all
desired types of work patterns during a week and within each day of the week. These can be used to govern the scheduling
of both resources and activities.
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The Holiday data set enables you to associate standard or customized holidays and vacation periods with
each calendar.
Output Data
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The Schedule data set contains the early, late, baseline, resource-constrained,
and actual schedules and any other activity-related information that is calculated by PROC CPM.
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The Resource Schedule data set contains the calculated schedules for each resource used by each activity
in the project.
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The Resource Usage data set contains
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resource use for early, late, and resource-constrained schedules
- resource surplus for resource-constrained schedules.
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resource use for early, late, and resource-constrained schedules
Key Capabilities
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Set constraints on start or finish dates for specific activities, or the whole project.
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Work with multiple user-defined project and subproject codes.
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Incorporate project hierarchy to facilitate multi-project scheduling.
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Work with subset projects (WHERE clause).
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Include multiple calendars and work shifts within each project.
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Associate calendars and work shifts with activities or resources.
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Substitute user-specified alternate or supplementary resources for insufficient resources.
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Specify auxiliary resource(s) to be assigned along with a primary resource.
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Specify resource-driven durations.
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Control the scheduling algorithm by specifying activity or resource priority.
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Allow activity preemption and activity splitting to deal with resource limitations.
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Maintain target schedules and compute schedule variances.
- Save macro status variable for easy system integration.
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