Multi-Project Management

Multi-project management
for complex industrial projects

Schedule projects without overbooking your resources. Spot delays and bottlenecks early and resolve them between project leadership and the departments – in one system. Built for mechanical and plant engineering.

Linetrack multi-project management software for mechanical and plant engineering

Quick answer

Multi-project management is the central control of several parallel projects that share resources. Project leadership schedules new projects against the capacity that is actually available, monitors the portfolio and decides what happens when a date slips or a bottleneck appears. Department heads add the detailed planning, assign their staff and resolve conflicts inside their own area first; whatever they cannot absorb goes back to the project. Linetrack, based in Stuttgart, holds both levels in one system, with scheduling and capacity planning natively connected. Industrial companies such as Stadler Rail, Schnaithmann, Stoll Gruppe and bavius have completed over 4,000 projects with it and currently run 1,512 in parallel.

270+

parallel projects
at a single customer

400+

replaced Excel lists
and planning tools

1512

projects managed
in parallel

4000+

completed
industrial projects

*Figures from live Linetrack implementations, as of August 2026.

Challenges

Typical pain points in
multi-project management

In mechanical and plant engineering, ten to hundreds of projects run in parallel with different timelines, customers and resource requirements. This everyday reality produces four typical bottlenecks – most of which surface too late. We've broken down separately which features a multi-project management software needs to make exactly these bottlenecks visible.

No reliable overview of parallel projects

Excel lists, individual MS Project files and ERP reports each deliver only a partial picture – never a consolidated view. Management and project leadership end up making decisions on outdated data. Every single Linetrack customer named a lack of portfolio transparency as the trigger for adopting the platform – decisions had previously been based on experience and gut feeling rather than numbers.

Invisible dependencies between projects

A delayed component in Project A blocks assembly in Project B. In fragmented tools, this only becomes apparent once the bottleneck has already hit.

Resource conflicts between projects

Multiple projects draw on the same design engineers, fitters and plant technicians. Who is actually free and who is overloaded is nearly impossible to tell from separate project plans.

High manual coordination effort

Status checks by email, phone and meetings eat up hours every week. By the time a status report is ready, it's usually already out of date.

Definition

What is multi-project management?

Multi-project management is the central planning, control and monitoring of several parallel projects that share resources and have mutual dependencies. Unlike classic single-project management, it treats all projects as one portfolio – with a view to resource conflicts, priorities and overall progress.

In mechanical and plant engineering, multi-project management is the standard, not the exception: engineering projects, special-purpose machines, plant conversions and service orders run in parallel and share resources such as design, assembly and commissioning. Anyone who falls back to a single-project view here misses the bottlenecks that actually matter.

Resource overview in Linetrack: weekly utilisation of design, assembly and production with overload highlighted

Portfolio view in Linetrack: 17 parallel projects in a Gantt chart with dates, progress and one expanded project including its dependencies

Roles and process

Who does what
in multi-project management

Multi-project management is not one role's job. Two control loops interlock: project leadership steers across all projects, the departments plan their capacity in detail. What matters is the handover between them.

Project leadership and PMO

Level: the portfolio – all projects, all departments

1
Schedule projects into the portfolio
Slot new orders into the schedule against the capacity the departments actually have free. Not against the date the customer asked for.
2
Monitor projects and portfolio
Track dates, progress and utilisation across every running project in one view, instead of asking for status one project at a time.
3
Act on delays and bottlenecks
When a date slips or an area is overloaded: set priorities, move work, redistribute, compare options against each other.
4
Push the solution into the department
The decision goes back to the affected area as a changed date or a changed scope. In the system, not by email.

Handover to the department

Department heads

Level: their own area – design, production, assembly

1
Add the detailed planning
Break the project's requirements down into work packages, estimate effort, set the sequence. Only the department itself can do that.
2
Assign staff
Put names on tasks, with an eye on qualification, holidays and the other projects running in the same period.
3
Steer their own area
Resolve delays and overload internally first: reschedule, swap, pull work forward, redistribute tasks.
4
Feed the solution back into the project
Whatever the department cannot absorb shows up in the project plan and lands back with project leadership.

Feedback into the project

When one department cannot solve it alone

If a solution touches several departments or moves dates in other projects, it goes back to project leadership. Only at portfolio level can you see what the rescheduling triggers across the rest of the project landscape. This switching between levels is what multi-project management actually is. In separate tools for scheduling and capacity it breaks down.

Solution

Why Linetrack for multi-project management in mechanical and plant engineering?

Generic project management tools are built for simple task lists, not interconnected project landscapes. They fall short on industrial projects with heavy dependencies, interlinked resources and external partners. Linetrack is built differently.

Collaborative, not a PMO island

Project leadership, departments and suppliers plan in the same system – not in separate tools synced up later. Data is entered where it originates and is instantly available everywhere.

Scheduling and capacity in one system

Unique in the market: schedule planning and resource planning are natively connected. No data loss between tools, no conflicting versions, no manual syncing between MS Project and Excel.

Built for industry

Built for complex, plan-driven industrial projects with long timelines and heavy dependencies. Not for software sprints or marketing campaigns. In use in mechanical and plant engineering, building services and construction.

USP 1

Portfolio level and department level work on the same plan

Project leadership plans milestones and rough dates across every project. The department plans who works on what and when. In most companies those are two separate plans: one in MS Project, one in the department's spreadsheet. Every change has to be carried over by hand.

In Linetrack they are two views of the same plan. The department adds its detailed planning underneath the project tasks, and project leadership sees straight away whether the date still holds. No status reconciliation, no two versions of the truth. Suppliers sit in the same plan instead of being chased by email.

How that split works in detail – who holds which write permissions, why a department maintains its own data willingly, and where co-planning ends and co-deciding begins – is covered on the page about collaborative project management.

Project leadership plans milestones and rough dates across all projects

Design, production and assembly add the detailed planning for their own area

Suppliers get structured access to their tasks and deadlines

Every change propagates into the portfolio immediately, with no status request

Stylized Gantt view of project management software for mechanical and plant engineering with collaborative resource planning, role-based views and real-time status overview across multiple projects and departments.

USP 2

Scheduling and capacity together in one system

Scheduling and capacity planning in one system means project leadership and departments plan together – schedules and resources are always in sync, with no data loss between tools. Linetrack is the only platform that natively connects both.

At most mechanical engineering companies, scheduling lives in MS Project or Excel while capacity planning sits in a separate resource tool or in ERP reports. Both plans have to be synced manually – with inevitable drift and constant conflicts.

Linetrack breaks down that divide. Move a deadline, and capacity planning reflects it immediately. If a design engineer is out, it directly affects the dependent deadlines. This isn't an interface between two systems – it's one system.

Aspect	Classic tool landscape
Scheduling	MS Project / Excel	One system
Capacity planning	Separate tool or ERP	One system
Synchronization	Manual, with drift	Native, in real time
Data state	Inconsistent	Single source of truth
Response to changes	Hours to days	Instant

Integrated scheduling and capacity planning for mechanical and plant engineering with a Gantt chart, resource utilization, real-time bottleneck detection and collaborative project control in a central project management software.

USP 3

Built for mechanical and plant engineering

Linetrack is not a generic project management softwareretrofitted for industry. The platform is built from the ground up for plan-driven industrial projects – with long timelines, many dependencies and shifting resources across design, manufacturing, assembly and commissioning.

That shows in every feature: structure plans for complex machines, plan-vs-actual comparisons spanning months, supplier integration in the schedule, interfaces to time tracking and ERP. Tools built for software sprints or marketing campaigns don't understand these requirements. See how Linetrack stacks up against classic tool landscapes and point solutions in the multi-project management software comparison.

Mechanical and plant engineering Complex engineering projects with long timelines

Special-purpose machinery One-off production and customer-specific solutions

Building services and energy technology Plant engineering and cross-trade projects

Construction and infrastructure Coordinate trades, control schedules and capacity

Development departments Product development with parallel work packages

Seamless integration

Interfaces to ERP, time tracking and Office

Linetrack doesn't replace your existing IT landscape – it connects it. Standardized interfaces link Linetrack with the systems commonly used in mechanical and plant engineering.

SAP · ERP (REST) · MS Project · Primavera · Excel · AIDA ORGA · Finkzeit · OptiTime

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Still have questions?

Questions about cost, rollout and resource conflicts are answered in the multi-project management FAQ. For anything else, book a slot.

What is multi-project management?

Multi-project management is the central planning, control and monitoring of several parallel projects that share resources and have mutual dependencies. It treats all projects as one portfolio – with a view to resource conflicts, priorities and overall progress – rather than running each project in isolation.

Why does an industrial company need multi-project management?

In mechanical and plant engineering, ten to thirty projects typically run in parallel, sharing resources such as design, assembly and commissioning. Without dedicated software, dependencies stay invisible, bottlenecks appear at short notice, and status checks eat up hours every week. Multi-project management software consolidates this view into a single system.

How does multi-project management differ from classic project management?

Classic project management looks at a single project in isolation. Multi-project management steers several projects at once and makes cross-project resource conflicts, dependencies and priorities visible. The key is the portfolio view: which project takes priority when the same people are needed elsewhere?

Who is responsible for what in multi-project management?

Two roles share the work. Project leadership schedules new projects against available capacity, monitors dates and utilisation across the whole portfolio, and decides on priorities and rescheduling when delays or bottlenecks appear. Department heads add the detailed planning, assign named staff and resolve conflicts inside their own area first. Whatever cannot be absorbed there, or affects several departments, goes back to project leadership.

How does the multi-project management process work?

As a loop of four steps: schedule, plan in detail, monitor, adjust. A new project is scheduled against free capacity, the departments add their detailed planning and assign staff. Day to day, project leadership tracks dates and utilisation across all projects. When a delay or bottleneck appears, the solution is found at the level where it sits: inside the department, or in the portfolio when it affects several of them.

How many projects can Linetrack handle?

Linetrack scales from a focused project team to a large portfolio – in practice from 5 to over 270 simultaneously running projects per customer. In total, 1,512 industrial projects are currently managed in parallel via Linetrack.

Case study

How Schnaithmann made its project planning transparent

As a mechanical engineering company running over 270 parallel projects, Schnaithmann struggled with fragmented planning data spread across multiple tools. With Linetrack, all projects now come together on a single central platform – with a reliable overview of schedules, resources and status.

"With Linetrack, we've eliminated numerous opaque planning processes."

Niklas Reitinger

Head of Project Management

Schnaithmann Maschinenbau GmbH