Optimized scheduling
take account of multiple competing objectives (i.e. providing high quality of service, being ‘fair’,
minimizing cost, maximizing utilization, minimizing staff fatigue, etc.) and many conflicting requirements
(i.e. staff preferences, acuity needs, contractual requirements, staff ratios, etc).
This technique assess millions of potential solutions to determine the single solution that is better
than any other based on the solution’s ability to meet particular objectives — the ‘optimal
solution’
This section provides the key benefits that employees, managers, and
executives in HR, Operations and IT enjoy from using optimized scheduling
solutions in their organizations.
For the overall benefits gained from using
OWM, please visit Business Impact page.
Why Optimized Scheduling?
Workforce scheduling is a key human resource management activity in modern
service organizations including healthcare, retail, travel & transportation,
hospitality, security, defense, government and utilities.
Staff scheduling requires an assessment of a multitude of factors including
labor requirements, personnel availability and profitability among other things.
Transparency and fairness on the part of the schedulers is vital to assure the
staff that equality is maintained. The fact that any one of these factors may
change from one minute to another, make workforce scheduling an expensive and
difficult proposition.
OWM addresses this need using breakthrough mathematical techniques.
This allows optimized schedules (manually impossible) to be generated within
minutes, at the click of a button. OWM completely eliminates bias and
favoritism through a unique point system, which provides a bidding mechanism
to staff members for preferences, and which uses historical data to ensure balanced
distribution of shifts.
The Need for High Quality Schedules
- Optimal Use of Scarce Resources: Specialized staff like
nurses, doctors, scientists and air-traffic controllers are increasingly scarce
resources in modern service organizations
- Provide Adequate
Quality of Service: Quality of service ensures competitive advantage
and business growth through customer loyalty. It is determined by right
mix of skill sets, competency levels, etc.
- Eliminate
Perceived Bias/Favoritism: Transparency and fairness on the
part of the duty planners is vital to assure the staff that equality
is maintained.
- Ensure Work-Life Balance: Fulfillment
of shift preferences is crucial for staff - job satisfaction, retention
and low turnover.
- Effective Fatigue Management: Specific
sequences of shifts either positively or negatively affect the
performance of staff.
- Minimize Operational Cost: Staff
salaries usually make up the largest single budget item in a
service organization’s operations. Cost and revenue implications
of schedules are severe.
- Meet Complex Regulations: Multitude
factors requires constant monitoring and tracking of the schedule
to ensure no critical regulations are violated
End result : Schedule quality is a mission-critical, multi-dimensional objective
Problems with conventional scheduling
- Long processing times: current methods necessitate a dedicated
duty planner that takes days or weeks to provide results
- Error-Prone: Manual
staffing leads to data entry errors causing organizations to lose precious
time in double-checking and money through over-paying claims, etc.
- Non-Systematic
Scheduling Process: Manual staffing often leads to inconsistent
scheduling process causing confusion to staffs that frequently move from
one department to the other.
- Sub-Optimal
Schedules: current approaches or IT systems are too simplistic
and do not rely on state-of-the-art optimization technologies to
provide optimal or useful results. Its main value-add is an electronic
roster format, which affords a marginal productivity gain through
reduced paper work.
End result: Unfair; low morale; low quality of service; precious management
time wasted; high turnover
Key benefits from OWM Scheduling module include
- A 95% reduction in ‘time to solution’ obtained through advanced
optimization technologies,
- Optimal utilization of staff by removing
artificial shortages and balancing workload,
- Improved quality of
service through optimal skill mix, effective fatigue management and adequate
staffing
- Significantly higher motivation and job-satisfaction
of staff, further increasing the productivity and quality of service
of the enterprise
- Significantly lower staff turnover, afforded
through guaranteed fair allocation of preferences and work-life-balance
parameters
- Better visibility and control across enterprise
- Standardization
of scheduling policies and institutionalization of knowledge
- Low-risk,
high-yield investment for client enterprises, through a unique deployment
process, which is proven in successful enterprise-wide deployments
of OWM
End result: Together these advantages lead to lower operating costs and a compelling
ROI
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