Gantt planning

Gantt chart software
for multiple industrial projects

Drawing a Gantt chart is easy. Keeping it current while twenty other projects compete for the same design engineers and fitters is the actual job. Linetrack puts the bar chart on a cross-project data foundation – so every shift is also a statement about resources.

Dependencies that recalculate when you shift
Capacity in the same view
All projects in one bar chart

In short

Gantt software maps a project's tasks as bars along a timeline, making duration, sequence and dependencies visible. The chart only becomes a reliable plan once resources and parallel projects sit behind it. In Linetrack the bar chart is the surface of a cross-project data foundation: whoever shifts a task sees immediately which departments and which other projects are affected.

400+

Excel spreadsheets and
planning tools replaced

91%

named Excel and tool sprawl
as their starting problem

1512+

industrial projects
managed in parallel

10 days

from kick-off
to go-live

Every figure on this page comes from a full survey of all live Linetrack implementations, as of August 2026. Multiple answers were possible for the starting problems.

Definition

What is a Gantt chart?

A Gantt chart is a bar chart: every task appears as a horizontal bar on a timeline, its length the duration, its position the date. Henry Gantt popularised the format in production control from the 1910s onward. Today it has to do more than illustrate: carry dependencies, resources and a view across every parallel project.

The underlying idea is older than the name – Karol Adamiecki described a comparable harmonogram back in 1896. The principle has not changed since; the context has. A bar chart is no longer something you pin to a wall, it is the surface of live project planning and control. How Linetrack organises the structure, dates and tasks behind it is covered by the project planning module.

How a Gantt chart is built

Break down. Split the project into work packages and tasks.
Assign. Set duration and responsible department for each task.
Link. Set dependencies between the tasks.
Mark. Add milestones – the bar chart is the result, not the starting point.

In practice

Why Gantt charts in Excel fail

Excel can draw bars – a date column, conditional formatting, done. The break does not happen when you draw the chart, it happens when you have to run it. Across the live Linetrack implementations surveyed, more than 400 planning tools were replaced, most of them Excel spreadsheets. 91% of customers named Excel and tool sprawl as one of their main reasons for switching (multiple answers possible).

Single-project planners such as MS Project solve the first two points: they know precedence relationships and calculate the critical path – Linetrack does as well, with the capacity histogram directly beneath. Single-project planners do not solve points three to five – a plan remains a file with exactly one person responsible. MS Project plans were replaced in the same implementations. Anyone steering several projects at once therefore needs not a better file but a shared data foundation. The comparison is in Linetrack and Excel and in the step towards multi-project management.

Dependencies are drawn, not calculated. An Excel bar does not know that assembly can only start once engineering is finished. If the task before it moves, everything downstream stays put until someone drags it by hand.
Resources are missing from the same picture. The plan shows when something is supposed to happen, but not whether engineering has any capacity that week. Utilization sits in a second file or in the ERP system – and is rarely updated at the same moment.
One file equals one project. Twenty parallel projects mean twenty files. The question of which department is overbooked in March cannot be answered in any single one of them – it only emerges from the sum.
Maintenance depends on one person. Usually the project manager maintains the plan for everyone. Departments report their status by phone or e-mail, and every update has to be typed in by hand. If that one person is away, planning freezes.
The plan is older than the meeting. By the time the status has been collected, consolidated and circulated as a PDF, days have passed. The discussion then revolves around a state of affairs that no longer exists.

Core argument

A Gantt picture or a Gantt plan

A Gantt chart is trivial to draw and hard to run. Every spreadsheet, every presentation tool and every online Gantt tool can put bars on a timeline. The difference between a Gantt picture and a Gantt plan is not in the visualization – it is in what sits behind it.

A Gantt plan has three things behind the bar: dependencies that actually take effect when something moves. Resources that carry out the task. And a second, third and fourth project plan drawing on those same resources. Take one of them away and the bar chart is a status graphic.

The test is simple: drag one task two weeks later. A picture changes colour. A plan tells you which successor tasks move with it, which department is pushed beyond its capacity as a result, and which other project has booked the same design engineer for exactly that period.

That answer is precisely why the schedule view and the resource view are not separate in Linetrack: the bar chart and the capacity histogram sit on top of each other and read the same data. How that connection works in detail is covered on the scheduling and capacity planning page.

400+

Excel spreadsheets and planning tools replaced

1512+

industrial projects managed in parallel

Solution

Why Linetrack is the right Gantt software for industrial projects

An online Gantt tool solves distribution: everyone sees the same status. It does not solve whether that status is feasible. Linetrack puts the bar chart, capacity and all projects on one data foundation.

Gantt planning in Linetrack with tasks, dependencies and milestones on a timeline

Bar chart from the work breakdown structure

Work packages and tasks are created once; the bar chart shows them on the timeline – with precedence relationships, milestones and progress from employee feedback. Planning works by drag and drop: pull, extend and link bars.

Scheduling and resource planning in Linetrack with bar chart and capacity histogram per department

Capacity directly beneath the bar

Every task carries the department and the hours that work it off. The histogram below reads the same data: available capacity and workload per department, across all projects.

Portfolio view with Gantt timeline across several parallel industrial projects

All projects in one Gantt

Because all projects sit on the same data foundation, planning is not limited to project management. Departments maintain their tasks in the same plan – from the smallest customer with 5 to the largest with over 270 parallel projects.

Dependencies

Dependencies and the critical path in a Gantt chart

A bar chart shows when something is supposed to happen. Whether it can happen is decided by the dependencies behind it: assembly starts only once design is complete. The longest chain of such dependencies is the critical path – any delay on it moves the end date.

The Gantt chart shows this chain on the timeline, the network diagram as logic. In Linetrack, precedence relationships and the critical path live in the same plan as the bar chart; how scheduling logic and capacity complement each other is described under scheduling and capacity planning.

Precedence relationships that act through the chain when you shift

Critical path: the tasks that determine the end date

Milestones as separate elements with scheduling logic

Buffers that recalculate when things shift

Impact

What happens when you move a task

Below the bar chart sits the capacity histogram: same timeline, same data, but the department's view instead of the project's. It shows available capacity and workload per department across all projects – not just the one currently open.

When a task is shifted, its hours move along in the histogram. If a department exceeds its capacity as a result, that is visible on the same screen – before the commitment to the customer, not after. How far plan and reality drift apart over time is shown by the planned-versus-actual comparison. How such interventions are decided in ongoing control is covered under project control.

That lets you simulate a shift first and decide afterwards: alternative scenarios are played through in the system, taken into the project meeting and selected there. What Linetrack deliberately does not do is replan automatically. The software shows the consequence of a decision – the decision itself is made by people who know the customer, the machine and the commitment.

Comparison

Gantt in Excel or a single-project planner versus Linetrack

The question is rarely whether a tool can display bars – they all can. The question is what happens on the second, fifth and twentieth project. Six points where a Gantt picture differs from a cross-project bar chart.

Aspect	Excel / single planner
Dependencies	Drawn, or linked within one plan only	Linked – a shift ripples through the chain
Resources in the same plan	Not included – second file or ERP system	Histogram directly below the bar chart
Several projects at once	One file per project	All projects on one data foundation
Milestones and buffers	Drawn as bars, with no scheduling logic behind them	Real elements that recalculate when a task moves
Impact of a shift	Surfaces at the next meeting	Visible instantly, in other projects too
Plan vs. actual in the same plan	Second file or manual reconciliation	Actuals feed into the same bar chart

An online Gantt tool solves distribution: everyone sees the same status in the browser, nobody works on an old copy any more. It does not solve whether that status is feasible – for that, capacities must sit in the same system. This distinction runs through all of project planning and control software and from the second parallel project onwards becomes a matter of multi-project management. Details on the tools: Linetrack and MS Project.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Still have questions?

Book a meeting with our team.

What is a Gantt chart?

A Gantt chart is a bar chart that shows a project's tasks on a timeline: the length of a bar equals its duration, its position the date. Connections between bars show dependencies, diamonds mark milestones. The format is named after Henry Gantt, who popularised it in production control from the 1910s onward.

How do you create a Gantt chart?

In four steps: break the project down into work packages and tasks, set a duration and a responsible department for each task, define the dependencies between tasks, and mark the milestones. The bar chart comes afterwards – it is the result of that structuring, not a substitute for it. In Linetrack the chart grows straight out of the work breakdown structure, so there is nothing to draw separately.

Is Excel suitable for Gantt charts?

For a single, manageable project yes – free Excel templates are often enough. As soon as dependencies, shared resources or several projects come in, maintenance gets more expensive than the benefit: Excel does not calculate precedence relationships, knows no capacities and keeps every project in its own file. In the evaluated Linetrack implementations, the majority of the 400+ replaced planning tools were Excel spreadsheets. The side-by-side: Linetrack and Excel compared.

What is the difference between a Gantt chart and a bar chart?

In substance, none – bar chart is simply the plainer term for the same visualization, and the German industrial equivalent is Balkenplan. Both mean tasks shown as bars on a timeline. The difference that matters is not the term but the implementation: a printed graphic, or a view onto a live project data foundation.

Which Gantt software is suitable for several projects at once?

One in which all projects sit on the same data foundation and resources are managed across projects. What counts is not the number of views but whether a shift in project A becomes visible in project B. Linetrack is built for exactly that: 1,512 industrial projects are currently managed in parallel, ranging from 5 to 270 per customer. How schedules and capacity connect is explained on the scheduling and capacity planning page.

What does Gantt software like Linetrack cost?

Linetrack starts at €10 per user per month. The licence model is modular and depends on the number of users, roles and booked function modules – read-only access to the bar chart costs less than full use with scheduling and capacity planning. The actual price depends on how many departments plan along. Go-live takes about 10 working days; the process is described under implementation.

What is the critical path in a Gantt chart?

The critical path is the longest chain of interdependent tasks between project start and project end. Any delay on this path moves the end date; tasks beside it have buffers. In a Gantt chart it can only be identified if the precedence relationships are actually linked – a bar drawn in Excel knows no path.

What is the difference between a Gantt chart and a network diagram?

Both describe the same project flow from two angles. The Gantt chart shows tasks as bars on a timeline and makes duration and dates visible. The network diagram shows the logical dependencies as nodes and arrows and is suited to calculating the critical path. In project software they are two views of the same plan, not two separate documents.

Case Study

From the Excel bar chart to a shared data foundation

Before Linetrack, bar charts lived in individual files, each with its own status and its own upkeep. Today the departments plan in the same plan – the meeting assesses deviations instead of first collecting statuses.

How Schnaithmann got there is told in the Schnaithmann Maschinenbau case study.

At Krüger & Salecker, the departments keep the work breakdown structure up to date in their daily work instead of filing it after kick-off.

LANG Technik keeps complex development and automation projects in view, planned collaboratively across departments.

At InVENTer, the project plan, status and open items of large development projects now sit in one place.

„With Linetrack, we've eliminated countless opaque plans."

Niklas Reitinger

Head of Project Management

Schnaithmann Maschinenbau GmbH