But we run an 8-hour overnight A-check line at ORD with about 240 planned MH and a hard 0500 release, and I’m looking for a lightweight scheduler that respects skill constraints and parts holds without the overhead of a full CMMS. What’s working for you — MS Project with a constraint add-in, or something like AMOS Resource Planner/TRAX line planning — that helps cut overtime and deferrals?
We’ve had good luck with Smartsheet + Resource Management on an 8-hour A-check: tag jobs by skill and add a simple “Parts OK” checkbox so anything on hold never gets packed into the night plan, which shaved overtime by about 10%. Minor caveat: its auto-leveling gets twitchy near release, so we pin the last 60 minutes; if you’re on O365, Planner + Power Automate can mimic the same “Parts OK” gate. Keeps the 0300 Tetris to a minimum.
Quick example: we put our overnight A-check into Airtable (https://airtable.com/) with skill tags and a ‘shortage’ rollup from the parts feed; Interfaces only show assignable tasks and the workload widget caps each license group so the 240 MH stays honest and 0500 doesn’t turn into a pumpkin. Tiny rule: any task with RII or open deferral auto-bumps to the next slot, so leads aren’t firefighting at 0300. If you need true precedence/float, MS Project still beats it, but for a lightweight board it’s been plenty.
We run a similar 8-hour line and stayed lightweight with MS Project using a shared resource pool by skill… Add a zero-duration ‘kit release’ milestone as a predecessor to any job needing those parts and cap Max Units per skill to on-shift heads, then run resource leveling to keep the plan inside the 0500 box — like traffic lights for kits (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/level-resource-allocations-in-project-7a3c07c0-4f2d-4aa3-8e1e-0755733e6c09); if you need lighter, Trello with WIP limits works but you lose real dependencies.
Float (https://www.float.com) has been the lightest thing that still respects cert mix and parts gates for our ORD A-check with about 240 MH and a hard 0500 release. We tag tasks with A&P/avionics codes plus a ‘kit ready by’ timestamp; anything not cleared by 2300 auto-slips to day shift so you don’t chase OT. Caveat: it won’t do real precedence chains, so we park the critical stuff in a tiny one-page Gantt for visibility.