McKinsey highlights in "Smart Scheduling: How to Solve Workforce-Planning Challenges with AI" that the complexity of workforce planning, alongside the need for dynamic, agile decision-making, creates significant challenges for organisations. Traditional methods often fall short, but advanced planning solutions can offer a more effective approach to managing these demands.
The primary task of workforce planning solutions is to deploy the correct number of workers to meet demand and minimise employee downtime on any given day, aiming to operate as efficiently as possible.
Staying Agile with Advanced Planning and Scheduling
The number of decision-making variables is constantly changing and often unforeseen - for example, unexpected peaks in demand, employee absenteeism, or the unavailability of key equipment.
This is where Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) solutions come into play. APS generally refers to the management process in which resource capacity is optimally allocated to meet demand. Workforce planning starts with an organisational needs assessment, which examines the number, skills, qualities, and qualifications required in the workplace to ensure optimum productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency.
Measurable Productivity
There are several metrics to make employee planning and scheduling efficiency, and thus productivity, tangible. These include, 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 correctly by the right skilled person in the most effective way)
- Unavailability of equipment and materials (for various reasons) which disrupt the execution of tasks
Appointment volume (maximising the number of tasks completed by the available resources)
Workforce Planning Made Easy
Effective capacity planning, for example, ensures expected demand is covered with sufficient shifts and rosters. Operational planning and revisions involve fully supporting the planner in making smart short-term decisions to create the best possible plan. Where desired and feasible, the solution supports (semi-) automated planning and optimisation.
It is important to understand that regardless of the level of automation in the decision-making process, the planner remains in control of the planning process.
About FSP-MR
The Field Service Planning - Multi Resource (FSP-MR) solution is a preconfigured APS solution that helps employees plan and execute tasks in the field in the most effective way. The solution assists the planner in balancing productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency through capacity planning, operational planning, revision management, and optimisation functions.
It is widely known that workforce planning can be highly complex. Therefore, Sopra Steria offers a managed service with the Field Service Planning - Multi Resource solution. This service is built on the best-of-breed DELMIA Quintiq planning software, providing a highly scalable digital solution for rostering and scheduling the tasks of your field service employees.