Workforce Scheduling

Skills Inventory = Institutional Knowledge

An Automated Labor Scheduling (ALS) solution is only as good as the data it uses and here’s the data we’re going to need. There are five different types of data: 1.    Production Plans 2.    Jobs 3.    Employees 4.    Absences 5.    Skills Inventory Although there’s more to be covered, Production Plans are addressed in our blog… Read more »

Speeding the Implementation Process with Workforce Scheduling Solutions

One might think that the longest part of an implementation project for workforce scheduling would be the customization of the software. Our customers at Tugboat have taught us that more often it’s entering local data for job skills into the SOS system that holds up the “go live” date. So this spring, we added a… Read more »

Labor Waste – Over Use Of Temporary Workers

We recently completed work with a customer where we were able to reduce their overall cost of labor and measure the results as well. The goal was to reduce the use of temporary workers (Temps). Temps are an ideal resource when balancing the ups-&-downs of production demand with a finite labor capacity. Using Temps is… Read more »

The benefits of software in a Lean production environment

In a recent article in the Manufacturing Business Technology magazine, Julie Fraser discusses how “software can bring some capabilities to the plant environment that are very difficult – if not impossible – to achieve by other means.” In particular, she highlights resource allocation as a need that can only truly be addressed by systems that… Read more »

We’re doing Fine – Why automate now?

At some point I’m usually asked “Why automate (the process) when our scheduler is already doing a good job?” It might seem counter-intuitive, but this is actually the best time to bring the tools of automation to bear. This is the time, before a talented scheduler moves-on to something else, to gather what they know,… Read more »