Being a workforce planner in a company is a tough and responsible job. People will often blame the planner if:
- If a roster is not in line with the expectations of the planned their expectations
- When the personal plan is not feasible due to sudden disturbances
- When rosters and planning do not match the personal contracts
- When the outcome of a number of tasks is below expectations.
Often the planner is rarely supported by any intelligent tools, and in practice, we see that MS Excel is the planning tool most often used. For many purposes, this can fit the needs. Often now though, the number of relevant factors has grown tremendously compared to the initial setup of these original spreadsheet(s).
We also see quite often that the creator of the initial way of planning has retired or meanwhile has left the company. If not, typically the knowledge is only in ‘the head of the builder’. When that person made the first version, often growth was not foreseen, and the solution was not meant to be used by multiple planners simultaneously.
Due to the lack of decision support from spreadsheets or other homegrown systems, the main activity of the planners consists of finding the right data and interpreting the data in the right way to make an informed decision with an efficient and holistic outcome.
Unfortunately, activities that we typically see happening in practice:
Gather on a week by week or day to day basis, all relevant information to abstract what the expected demand will be. Typically, this needs many phone-calls and checking multiple data sources and lists.
What is the contract of a specific person? How many hours is a person supposed to work and on what are her/his working days?
- Checking which labor laws and collective agreements rules should be applied?
- Who is certified for working with what equipment?
- Are specific competences required to execute certain tasks?
- There is a lot of pressure to get the decisions made timely.
In summary, with the lack of an advanced planning system the planner is distracted with tasks that are not relevant to build a better plan. As this involves manual effort of people working in a stressful situation, it is unavoidable that ‘mistakes’ are made. The implications can vary from small to severe.
To name a few consequences:
- Infeasible plans. The tasks can simply not be executed according to plan.
- Plans and rosters not in line with personal preferences.
- Personal contracts are not respected, with variance between not fulfilling the contractual hours to structural and expensive overtime payments.
- Violation of labor laws and collective agreements.
- Dangerous situations by mismatch of required competencies and certifications.
Having an advanced planning system like Field Service planning – Multi Resource solution for the mobile workforce available, planners will make a plan optimized to take into account all constraints. As many of the current tasks of the planner can be digitized (and/or automated), planners can focus on what they’re hired for: making the best possible plan the first time.
About FSP-MR
It is common knowledge that workforce planning puzzles can be very complex. Therefore, Sopra Steria 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.