Plan looping activities in time

RalfdeGier

Hello everyone, I'm trying to build a solution I have not yet encountered before. The assignment is to plan a "chain of activities" and the amount of hours they cost over time. Each activity is triggered by another activity, but  can also be triggered by itself (let's say that the activity needs to occur every year).  One activate multiple other activities. I have added a simplified schema to this post. 

Does anyone has encountered this kind of problem and found a best practice for it? 

 

Chartflow_activities_94260.PNG

JaredDolich

@RalfdeGier 

Yep, this iteration logic sounds very similar to what's called a Bill of Material (BOM) where you can have sub-components built from smaller components. You might try @DavidSmith new article on this subject located here. You'll have to scroll down to towards the bottom and download the file. 

To be honest, Anaplan doesn't yet iterate very well. The best I've been able to do is to create a fake list. Each list item represents an iteration. The only challenge with this method is that all iterations get calculated whether you need them or not. Anaplan is an "always on" calculation engine. A use case I've used this for is a forward weeks of supply, where it keeps calculating forward until the inventory runs out and returns the time period in which the inventory is depleted. You can check it out here.