Read All About It
Preface
I learned the trick of scheduling by meeting hundreds of people. My job was to build software that would help them out in their daily tasks. By designing four different software tools targeted at different industries and working with top operational research specialists over 18 years, I was able to wrap my head around the whole problem and develop deep knowledge in scheduling.
The problem with this approach is that knowledge is all in my head. One of my employees told me at some point: ‘I can’t do anything about my lack of knowledge; there is no book and no diploma out there about scheduling’. I thought: ‘Really? This can’t be…’. There had to be a better way to learn about scheduling than meeting customers at hyper speed.
When trying to find books about scheduling, I was always steered to project management books or to high-end operational research articles that lost me after two sentences. I found no book that would explain the principles and concepts of workforce scheduling in practical terms that are understandable to the non-scientific.
So here I am, a few years later, with the project to write a book about scheduling a workforce and making it simple, clear and concise. I send my sincere thanks to all of these wonderful planners who took the time to explain their own way of doing their schedule in their part of the world.
But, things don’t always go as you planned. So this is why instead of publishing a book, I’ve decided to release every part as an independent text on this blog. So, if you stay tuned, you’ll learn about scheduling on this website.
This series is therefore targeted to those who want to understand why is scheduling so key and important to a business and also, why is it so difficult to achieve. I hope you will find it enjoyable, but mostly, educating and understandable.
1- Introduction
1.1-Everybody Schedules
1.2-Change is the only constant
1.3-Workforce Scheduling
1.3.1-The Workload
1.3.2-The Employees
1.3.3-The Constraints
1.4-The Process
1.4.1-Breaking down the work
1.4.2-Calculating Positions
1.4.3-Planning the Non-Work
1.4.4-Distributing Shifts
1.4.5-Maintaining the schedule
1.5-Finding Support
1.5.1-Strategy becomes input
1.5.2-Choosing Tools
2-Build your workload
2.1-Workload Identification (Part 1 – Part 2)
2.2-Workload Quantification
2.2.1-Time Dependant Workload (Part 1 - Part 2)
2.2.2-Time Independant Workload
2.2.3-Mixed Workloads
2.2.4-Open and close times
2.2.5-The Wiggle Room
2.3-Other Alternatives
3-Understand the workforce
3.1-Arriving
3.1.1-Training
3.1.2-Workload and Absenteeism
3.1.3-Demographics
3.2-Staying
3.2.1-The idiot virus
3.2.2-Set Expectations
3.2.3-Share Information
3.2.4-Self Scheduling
3.3-Leaving
4-Define your constraints
4.1-Work and Rest
4.1.1-Shift Constraints
4.1.2-Day Constraints
4.1.3-Week Constraints
4.1.4-Horizon Constraints
4.1.5-Sequence Constraints
4.2-Fairness and Rotations
4.2.1-What About Seniority?
4.2.2-Self Scheduling
4.3-Training
4.4-The Agreement
4.5-Breaking the Rules
5-Assembling a Schedule
5.1-Breaking Down the Work
5.1.1-Time Dependant Workload (Part 1 – Part 2)