Tugboat Software’s workforce scheduling solution enables a system for eliminating labor waste. Implementing a solution that can be “rolled out” across an enterprise or division faces many obstacles, such as:
- The absence of any industry-standard for workforce scheduling in manufacturing
- The multitude of plant-specific scheduling variations
- The imbedded nature of existing scheduling policies.
In spite of these obstacles, eliminating labor waste is an important enterprise objective in manufacturing today.
Using Labor Scheduling to Eliminate Labor Waste
A commitment to labor waste management commitment and the right pilot plant are the first steps in the strategy. For the right pilot plant, large scale helps to engage resources capable of the analysis and rigorous project management required. However, to eliminate labor waste, the right mix of project resources is more important than size.
Management’s All-Important Role in Labor Waste Management
Implementing employee scheduling software to eliminate labor waste is like any other project and needs management’s commitment. However, it has aspects that make it unique from other IT projects: plant vs. corporate commitment, and the bottom-up nature of workforce scheduling.
For example, in the case of a new payroll system, the application is designed at the corporate level with some region-specific input from the plant and then rolled out from the top down. A workforce scheduling initiative is the other way around. Corporate-level project management is needed. In order to eliminate labor waste, it is necessary to focus project resources from both plant and enterprise.
The plant is where the analysis and data-input work has to be done. It is where we are going to look for labor waste. Yet in today’s corporate environments, project and IT resources are usually centralized or even outsourced. While plant-level IT and project management staff is overworked or nonexistent. A balance between plant and corporate commitment is needed for successful labor waste management efforts.
Corporate commitment in labor waste management includes:
- Project Management
- Clerical support for initial data input
- Cost of automating shared rules
- Support for front-line management
Plant commitment in labor waste management includes:
- Training
- Initial data input
- Cost of automating plant-specific rules
- Monthly operation
Want to eliminate your labor waste? Tugboat Software can help you. Contact us today and we can show you how!
