Comparison

Linetrack vs.
Asana

Asana organises work in teams: tasks with owners and due dates, plus dependencies and a Timeline. It is well built for that job. This comparison shows which planning level Asana belongs to in mechanical and plant engineering, what is missing once engineering, production and assembly are planned across many projects, and when Asana remains the right choice.

Linetrack compared with Asana for scheduling and capacity planning in industrial projects

In short

Asana is a tool for work management in teams. It collects tasks, links them through dependencies and shows them in a Timeline. In mechanical and plant engineering, that is the lowest planning level, task tracking. Above it sit project planning with the schedule and resource forecast, and the detailed planning of the departments. Per its own documentation, Asana's critical path ignores resource availability, and ERP systems only connect via third-party tools. Linetrack connects all three levels on one data basis, from the bar chart with its capacity histogram to feedback on the task. If you need a system for complex projects, Linetrack is therefore the better fit.

400+

Excel spreadsheets and
planning tools replaced

56 %

already had a PM system
and switched anyway

59 %

named manual status chasing
as their starting problem

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.

Starting point

What Asana was built for

Asana is a cross-industry work management platform. Marketing plans campaigns in it, product teams maintain roadmaps, cross-functional teams hand out tasks with an owner and a due date. Tasks can be linked through dependencies. From the Starter tier up, Asana shifts dependent dates automatically, and the Timeline shows the chain as bars. Connections to Salesforce, Slack, Tableau and Power BI let Asana fit into many existing tool landscapes.

The basic unit in Asana is the task: who does what by when. That is exactly the information a design engineer needs for the week. Whether engineering as a department has enough capacity in March across all projects is a different question, and it is answered on a different level. Which system categories exist for that is covered in the software comparison.

Planning levels

Which level Asana plans on

Planning in mechanical and plant engineering happens on three levels, and each has its own people. Project management plans dates and the resource demand per department. Department heads plan their area in detail and decide who works on which order and when. Staff work through their tasks and report back. Asana is at home on this third level, task tracking.

Today, each level usually runs its own tool, and these islands do not exchange data. The schedule sits in MS Project, the department's staffing in an Excel sheet, the tasks in Asana. Linetrack replaces these isolated solutions and puts all three levels on one shared data basis. When a fitter reports that an assembly will be finished later, that status sits on the task in the project plan. Project management sees in the same system which follow-on dates move and which department carries more load in which week as a result. Anyone who wants to control complex projects across all levels needs this connection. What it looks like day to day is described on the multi-project management page.

Sales and project management
Project planning and resource forecast
A schedule across the project duration and a forecast of which department needs how many hours, and when.
Typically used:
- MS Project
- Primavera P6
- Excel
Cost side:
- ERP project module
The forecast goes to the departments as resource demand.
Department heads
Detailed and staff scheduling
Each department plans its share in detail and assigns staff a few weeks before the work starts.
Typically used:
- Detailed scheduling system
- Excel sheets
Staff scheduling becomes the task: person, activity, due date.
Staff
Task tracking
Work through the tasks and report back. The feedback turns the planned status into an actual status.
Typically used:
- Trello
- Asana (this comparison)
- Monday.com
- Stackfield
- Microsoft To Do
The actual status goes back into project control: plan vs. actual, scenarios, rescheduling.

Linetrack connects all three levels on one data basis

The forecast lands directly in department planning
Staff scheduling creates the tasks
Feedback via the app updates the plan
Plan vs. actual and scenarios in project control

Today each level often works in its own system, reconciled by email, meetings and Excel sheets.

Breaking point

Where task management reaches its limit

Asana gets a lot right on its level. The limit shows where a task list is supposed to become the plan for an engineering project.

None of this is a flaw in Asana. Asana is built for work in teams, and for teams that hand out tasks among themselves that is the right scope. An engineering project also needs tasks with dependencies, capacity per department across all projects and feedback that lands in the schedule. How dates and capacity fit together is described on the scheduling and capacity planning page.

Collecting tasks is not planning projects. An engineering project has a sequence that follows from the work itself: design before production before assembly, with purchased parts and their lead times in between. That produces the hours needed per department, which department heads use to assign their staff. Asana is designed to hand out tasks and show their status.
The critical path knows nothing about load. According to Asana's own documentation, the critical path in the Timeline is calculated purely from dates and durations. Whether the people behind the tasks are available during that time is not factored in and has to be checked separately.
The view across all projects depends on the tier. Asana shows cross-project load with Portfolio Workload from the Advanced tier and with Universal Workload on the Enterprise tier. Per user reports, the view gets noticeably slower past roughly 250 projects.
Feedback ends in the task. Once a task is done, it is ticked off in Asana. Whether the delivery date of the plant still holds is in the schedule, and that usually sits in a different tool. Project management ends up chasing the status again. 59 % of Linetrack customers named manual status chasing as one of their starting problems.
The ERP stays outside. Asana has no native connection to SAP, NetSuite or Dynamics. Orders, project numbers and actual hours only reach the system through third-party tools such as Workato, Celigo or Alumio.

Core argument

Asana collects tasks, Linetrack connects the levels

Agile work management tools such as Asana, Trello or Monday are built for task management, and they are good at it. Asana brings more to that job than many others: dependencies with automatic date shifting, a Timeline with a critical path you can highlight, and a broad range of integrations.

Even so, an engineering project cannot be controlled as a task list. Its complexity sits in the levels above, in the schedule with its resource forecast and in the detailed planning of the departments. Running these levels in separate tools means planning on islands. Linetrack connects them in one system and replaces the isolated solutions.

The test: ask whether engineering is overbooked in March across all projects, and what late production on order A means for assembly on order B. In Asana, the partial answers sit in different places. Dates are in the Timeline, load is in a Workload view on higher tiers, and the critical path is calculated without availability. In Linetrack, the critical path is in the bar chart and the capacity histogram below it shows the load across all projects. Nothing is levelled automatically. Project management runs scenarios in the system and makes the decision.

Linetrack has task tracking too, on the lowest level and with a clear purpose. The department's staff scheduling assigns person, task and due date. Staff report back on the task, and the planned status of the plan becomes an actual status. Project control responds to that, for example with the plan-vs-actual comparison.

Side by side

Asana
versus Linetrack

Seven points where the difference shows up day to day. What is compared is the scope of the two systems, not a feature list.

The table describes two levels, not a ranking in task management. For handing out tasks in a team, Asana is a mature tool. In engineering projects, what matters is whether the tasks are connected to the schedule and department planning, and whether suppliers can work in it as well. In Linetrack they get a free collaboration licence for that, as the supplier integration page shows. Asana figures as of our own research based on Asana's product pages and documentation, August 2026.

Aspect	Asana
Planning level	Task tracking and work management in teams	Project planning, detailed department planning and task tracking on one data basis
Planning object	Task with owner, due date and dependencies	Task with date, duration, department and dependencies
Critical path	Can be highlighted in the Timeline, per Asana documentation without resource availability	From dependencies, shifts ripple through the chain, load shows in the histogram below
Capacity across projects	Portfolio Workload from Advanced, Universal Workload on the Enterprise tier	Capacity histogram directly below the bar chart, across all projects
Who plans	Teams hand out tasks among themselves	Project management plans roughly, department heads plan in detail down to individual staff, with roles and rights per area of responsibility
Feedback and control	Status per task, dates in the Timeline	Task tracking on the task via desktop and mobile app, baselines, plan-vs-actual comparison and scenarios
ERP and time tracking	Own integrations with Salesforce, Slack, Tableau and Power BI, ERP only through third parties such as Workato or Celigo	ERP integration with SAP, proALPHA and AP+ among others, time tracking via AIDA, Finkzeit, OptiTime and VenDoc

Security & Trust

Your data. Secure in Germany.

Linetrack runs entirely within the EU – hosted with an ISO-certified partner, fully encrypted, and backed up regularly.

Made in the EU

GDPR-compliant

Hosted in Germany

Application, database, and backups run exclusively with Hetzner in the Falkenstein data center.

Fully GDPR-compliant

Your data is processed and stored exclusively within the EU.

ISO/IEC 27001:2022-certified data center

Our hosting partner operates the data center to the internationally recognized ISO/IEC 27001 security standard.

Encrypted in transit and at rest

Data transmission via TLS 1.2/1.3, storage secured with AES-256 encryption.

Multi-tier backups

Hourly, daily, and monthly backups with a typical recovery time of under one hour.

Honest boundaries

When Asana remains the right choice

Asana clearly has its place on its own level. Four cases in which switching brings no gain:

The work has no schedule tied to department capacity. If a team hands out tasks in marketing, sales or administration and no delivery dates depend on the load of several departments, Asana fits that work exactly.
Few projects, little shared staff. If only a few projects run in parallel and they hardly share people, dependencies and a Timeline are enough. The coordination effort between departments that Linetrack resolves does not arise.
Asana is firmly embedded in the tool landscape. If Salesforce, Slack, Tableau or Power BI are already connected to Asana and the teams work there smoothly, that is real value. A switch then has to do more than answer a capacity question.
One tool for every part of the company. If the same system is meant to cover marketing campaigns, product roadmaps and internal initiatives, a cross-industry platform like Asana is the better fit. Linetrack is built for industrial projects.

Scheduling and resource planning in Linetrack across several projects and departments

The situation is different when many parallel projects draw on the same departments, delivery dates hang on the chain of design, production and assembly, and dates, capacity and tasks currently sit in three different tools. For these companies Linetrack is the better choice, because it brings the three planning levels together in one system and Asana is no longer needed on the lowest level. How that looks in mechanical and plant engineering is described on the industry page.

Switching

How switching works in practice

Linetrack is introduced through project planning. Existing schedules from Excel, MS Project, Primavera or SAP are read in through the standard imports instead of being typed up. Department heads then get access to their area of responsibility and plan their share in detail down to individual staff.

That detailed planning produces the tasks for staff. They see what needs doing by when and report the status directly on the task, at their workstation or via the mobile app. The task lists from Asana are not transferred for this. The tasks are created fresh from the plan and are therefore tied to tasks with a date and a department from the start.

Work breakdown structure in Linetrack with work packages, activities and responsible departments

It takes ten working days from kick-off to go-live. Data is held in ISO 27001 certified data centres in Germany, and licences start at 10 € per user per month on a modular basis. The process in phases is described on the implementation page.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Still have questions?

Book a meeting with our team.

What is the difference between Asana and Linetrack?

Asana is a work management platform that hands out tasks in teams, links them through dependencies and shows them in a Timeline. In mechanical and plant engineering, that corresponds to the task tracking level. Linetrack connects this level with project planning and the detailed planning of the departments on one shared data basis. The bar chart shows the critical path, the capacity histogram below it shows the load across all projects, and staff report their status directly on the task. The wider context is described on the multi-project management page.

Is Asana suitable for project management in mechanical and plant engineering?

For task management in teams, yes. For controlling engineering projects, the connection to the schedule and department capacity is missing. According to its own documentation, Asana's critical path does not account for resource availability, cross-project Workload views are only available on the Advanced and Enterprise tiers, and ERP systems can only be connected through third-party tools.

Does Asana have dependencies and a critical path?

Yes. From the Starter tier up, Asana shifts dependent dates automatically, though only downstream. The critical path can be highlighted in the Timeline. According to Asana's documentation, it is calculated purely from dates and durations, and staff availability is not factored in. Linetrack also calculates the critical path from dependencies and shows the capacity histogram across all projects below it. Nothing is levelled automatically; project management makes the decision. How the bar chart is built is shown on the Gantt planning page.

Does Asana show load across multiple projects?

Yes, with Portfolio Workload on the Advanced tier and Universal Workload on the Enterprise tier. Per user reports, the view gets noticeably slower past roughly 250 projects, even though a portfolio can nominally hold 1,500 projects. In Linetrack, the capacity histogram sits directly below the bar chart and reads the data of all projects. More on the resources and capacity page.

Can Asana be connected to an ERP system?

Not natively. Asana's own integrations focus on Salesforce, Slack, Tableau and Power BI. A connection to SAP, NetSuite or Dynamics runs through third-party tools such as Workato, Celigo or Alumio. Linetrack connects directly to ERP systems, including SAP, proALPHA and AP+, and to time tracking systems such as AIDA, Finkzeit, OptiTime and VenDoc. Details are on the ERP integration page.

Does Linetrack also have task tracking for staff?

Yes. In staff scheduling, the department head assigns person, task and due date. Staff see their tasks on the desktop or in the mobile app and report the status directly on the task. That feedback turns the planned status of the project plan into an actual status, which project control responds to with the plan-vs-actual comparison and scenarios. What that looks like on a smartphone is shown on the mobile app page.