October

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Active Labor Management for Supply Chain Visibility

Does your labor deployment strategy have a positive impact on your profit margins? Most manufacturers hope so, which is the essential problem. In a brutally competitive market, the idea of hope entails a troubling amount of uncertainty. The deeper the questions run, the more that uncertainty grows.

Is your labor actively flexing with dynamic production plans?
Is your excess labor easily distinguishable from your productive labor?
Are you optimizing shared labor resources across the entire facility?

Using software to manage labor complexities is the first step toward answering these questions. Trying to manually account for so many labor deployment variables is like doing long division in your head – while juggling! A scheduler must ensure that each line is staffed with enough people at the right times to achieve production goals. This is no easy task considering that a facility’s available workforce often changes from shift to shift due to unplanned absences. Moreover, all of the on-the-fly labor adjustments must adhere to rigid collective bargaining agreements or facility run rules. On top of it all, a scheduler must be certain that each worker is properly qualified to perform his or her assigned job. Labor scheduling software makes these kinds of gritty, day-to-day scheduling challenges much easier.

But in order for scheduling software to have a meaningful impact on a larger supply chain strategy, it must go far beyond the basics of labor deployment administration. Unfortunately, most labor scheduling software providers convince manufacturers that these “first steps” are good enough. It’s an easy sell, really. The software looks slick. The implementation was long. The investment was big. Combine all of this with a manufacturer’s high hopes and everyone appears to be a winner. The problems inevitably arise after the honeymoon. While the new software certainly alleviates some of the scheduler’s administrative burdens, many find that their labor deployment looks no different than it did before. The truth is that these “first-step” software features have very little impact on a facility’s lean business goals of efficiency and profitability.

ScheduleSoft’s scheduling software allows manufacturers to:

Directly integrate with production plan software and systems. With the live production schedule directly driving labor staffing demands, ScheduleSoft ensures the optimum labor headcount under dynamic production conditions.
Formally associate deployed labor with specific products or SKUs. This relationship makes it easy for manufacturers to accurately measure their labor costs per product in real time.
Automatically incorporate budge tary labor standards into the staffing demands and shift schedules. ScheduleSoft’s proprietary algorithms translate an organization’s published – often fractional – labor standards into actual, optimized shop-floor assignments.
Easily compare the actual labor deployment with the optimum staffing model for a specific production run. Front line managers can see exactly where and when they have too much or too little labor. This visibility allows them to employ idle workers elsewhere in the facility, or avoid unnecessary overtime assignments.
Successfully manage shared labor resources across multiple lines. ScheduleSoft automates the balanced and optimized deployment of a facility’s shared labor regardless of how the production schedule may change.

These high-level capabilities provide a manufacturer with luxuries that go far beyond improved schedule administration. Facility management can finally make labor an integral part of a supply chain strategy. By linking together labor deployment, SKUs, production plans, and budgetary standards, ScheduleSoft enables a manufacturer to see exactly how labor is affecting each product’s cost. The software allows a facility to make informed decisions about balancing full-time and part-time workers. These advanced labor scheduling features also make it possible for facility planners to explore the cost benefits of adjusting a production run’s sequence. In other words, asking more from labor scheduling software means taking the uncertainty out of critical labor deployment questions. ScheduleSoft effectively replaces nervous hope with sophisticated answers.