Trial plan

A trial plan is a projection of what a production plan would be if it covered a longer period of time. For example, if you generate a production plan that covers two days, but you want to know what the plan would be if it covered three days you can generate a trial plan.

These are the characteristics of a trial plan:
  • Its start date matches:
    • The preproduction plan start date.
    • The production plan end date.
  • It is based on the static information stored in the current preproduction plan.
  • It cannot be run to manage production.
  • It can be managed by users with access build on trialsked file object type set in the security file on the master domain manager.
  • It produces a file stored in the schedlog directory with these properties:
    • The same format as the Symphony file.
    • The file name starts with a leading T.

Trial plan generations may result in the extension of the preproduction plan end time. This depends on the settings of the minLen and maxLen global options. When this happens, the database is locked and only unlocked when the operation completes.

There is no restriction on the time period selected for a trial plan, but the size of the resulting file containing all trial plan information must be taken into account.

Because the trial plan is based on the static information stored in the preproduction plan, it does not take into account any dynamic updates made to the Symphony file while the production plan is being processed, so all the job streams it contains are in one of these two states:
HOLD
If they are dependent on other job streams or if their start time is later than the start of plan time.
READY
If they are free from dependencies and their start time has elapsed.
The operations that can be performed on a trial plan on the master domain manager are:
creation
Used to create a trial plan to have an overview of production when a production plan does not yet exist.
extension
Used to create a trial plan of the extension of the current production plan to have an overview of how production evolves in the future.

For information on how to create or extend a trial plan, refer to Planman command line.