I’m trying to make use of Project Management to track our R&D activities. It seems like it could be a great way to keep POs, jobs, even the occasional sales order together. My main question is about jobs:
I can make a project job. But the job doesn’t have a deliverable… no demand link. Do I just issue material to it even though there is no output from the project? The output is essentially knowledge.
Building on that concept, often times materials used in a test or R&D activity are able to be re-used. Does anyone else have a good approach for dealing with this? I don’t want the materials to be removed from the job because there was a cost to purchase the item… but common sense says if the thing is still good and usable, don’t just throw it away. But then again, if I use it on another R&D activity, I have to know now to issue that material because it was already issued… just thinking out loud. Any ideas/advice?
For this same situation, we are creating a production job and reverse-linking it to the Project. According to the finance consultant we have worked with, if it deals with inventory or ends up in inventory, it can’t be a project job.
