Equipment usage

There are those that like to use Material resources for this kind of thing but I have never liked that approach since material resources were designed to model the consumption of materials (wood, cable, cement, etc). The rationel that I have heard is that using material resources for this kind of thing does not add Work hours to the task the way a Work resource does. In Project if you assign a work resource to a 1 day duration task (with all the defaults set) then the assignment will add 8 hours of Work to the task. A material resource will not do this.

However, Material resources cannot have calendars and availablity. They are assumed to always have unlimited availability and this does not match up with your situation.

I would create a Work resource called Test Racks and give it a Max Units value of 200% (because you have two of them. Then assign it to all the tasks you need to. If at any point the Test Racks resource is allocated more than 200% then you will need to reschedule some tasks. It would be up to you to decide which task uses which rack. Project will not care. If it is important to know which one ahead of time then create 2 resources, Rack 1 and Rack 2 with Max Units of 100% each.

Hello Jimm and Brian,
Brian is right, MS understands "Material" resources as "Raw material", not as "Equipment"
Therefore the only way to create an Equipment resource is to set it up as a "Work" resource, that will have a budgeted quantity and a calendar
When you assign such a resource, make sure the task is no longer Effort driven, as MS Project would share the existing amount of work amongst the real Work resource (manpower) and the dummy Work resource (equipment)
It is a good thing to create Resource Groups to distinguish manpower from machinery; groups will be used in filters or bar chart task groups, you cannot assign a resource group as it to a task
Hope it helps,
Alexandre

Thank you Alexandre and Brian. You’ve given me some good ideas and confirmed what I thought about the way Project handles equipment. It seems to be a bit of a weakness but I think I can make it work.