Benefit 3: Efficient Assignments of People, Equipment and/or Materials

McKinsey acknowledged in an article ‘Smart scheduling: How to solve workforce-planning challenges with AI’ that the complexity of workforce planning and the demand for dynamic action make agile decision making very difficult.

The main task of workforce planning solutions is deploying the right number of workers to meet demand and minimize employee downtime on any given day, with the idea to operate as efficient as possible.

The number of decision-making variables is constantly changing and often unforeseen — e.g. unexpected peaks in demand while employees might not show up at work or key equipment is unavailable.

This is where Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) solutions come into play. In general APS refers to the management process by which resource capacity are optimally allocated to meet demand. Workforce planning begins with organizational needs assessment which examines the number, skilled, quality and qualification of people to be absorbed into the workplace for optimum productivity, effectiveness and efficiency.

There are multiple metrics to make employee planning and scheduling efficiency and thus the productivity tangible, including for example:

• Travel and idle time

• Missed appointments due to unforeseen circumstances

• First time right rate (by including the equipment and/or material in the planning, tasks can be executed directly by the right skilled person in the most effective way)

• Unavailability of equipment and material (for whatever reason) which disturb the execution of tasks to be executed

• Appointment volume (maximize the number of tasks executed by the available resources)

The Ordina Field Service Planning – Multi Resource solution is the preconfigured APS solution that helps that employees are planned to execute tasks in the field in the best way. The solution supports the planner in search for the best balance in productivity, effectiveness and efficiency includes capacity planning, operational planning, revision management and optimization functions.

Good capacity planning for example the covers the expected demand with sufficient shifts and rosters. The operational planning and revisions are about the ability to fully support the planner in smart short-term decisions to come to the best possible plan. If desired and possible, the solution supports (semi-) automated planning and optimization.

It is important to realize that regardless the level of automation of the decision making process, the planner will remain in control of the planning process.

About FSP-MR
It is common knowledge that workforce planning puzzles can be very complex. Therefore, Ordina offers a managed service with the Field Service planning – Multi Resource solution. The service is based on underlying technology of the best of breed DELMIA Quintiq planning software. It is a highly scalable digital solution for rostering and scheduling tasks of your field services employees. Please also read the articles on the other unique business benefits of the SaaS solution:

1.        Differentiation through operational excellence’

2.        Employee Satisfaction: Increase loyalty and improve the workforce retention

3.        Efficient assignments of People, Equipment and/or Materials

4.        Reduced risk with less an error-prone planning process

5.        Future proof solution in a constantly changing world