At the John F. Kennedy International Airport in the Jamaica district of New York City, Terminal Four is known as the International Arrivals Building. Housing 54 airlines that service more than 6 million passengers per year, this one terminal handles more international traffic than the nation's fourth largest airport. With traffic now overwhelming the existing structures, a new 1.5 million-square-foot terminal facility with 16 gates and extra room for expansion is currently under construction. When the new facility opens, in the fall of 2001, it will include centralized check-in areas, expanded immigration and customs facilities, a light-rail link to the New York subway system, and a five-block-long retail concourse selling all kinds of merchandise at street-level prices.

The organization responsible for Terminal Four is JFK International Air Terminal LLC with about 100 employees working 14 continuous shifts. The person responsible for staffing those shifts is Daryl Jameson. Like many other schedule managers Daryl, first tried to manage the schedule with a standard spreadsheet program. However, like the old Terminal Four buildings, his spreadsheet program was not designed for the volume of activity it was tasked to manage. Daryl needed a better solution, and he found that solution two years ago in software program called ScheduleSoft.

Unlike a spreadsheet program, ScheduleSoft is designed for shift management, and it can simplify the scheduling task in any organization where people work in multiple shifts. The scheduling process requires knowledge of job requirements, workers, and the rules and policies for making staffing decisions. To offer these features an automated scheduling program must combine a versatile database with rules-based logic and automated table generation. Spreadsheet programs have none of these features. Spreadsheets create attractive tables but they provide no logic to determine what the tables should display. Like pencil and paper scheduling, spreadsheet scheduling is a manual and mental process that is far less accurate and nowhere near as fast as automated scheduling with ScheduleSoft software.

Daryl could have contracted for custom software but he never considered doing that. Custom software installations are always risky and very costly. It can also take a year or more to construct the program and get out all the bugs. ScheduleSoft can learn the rules and policies of any environment, so Daryl was able to customize his own application without the need for programming – and he can change those rules at any time. Daryl stated that having the flexibility to customize the program and determine its output has been a very useful feature. It allows him to experiment with different scheduling arrangements. In his own words, "ScheduleSoft allows us flexibility to create different models before we choose a final schedule. It now takes us only a few minutes to generate a long-term schedule - whereas in the past it took us hours."

Setting up the program was, in Daryl's words, “no difficulty at all." He had at his disposal an illustrated users guide, a tutorial, and on-line help. During what ScheduleSoft refers to as its interview process, the program prompted Daryl for the information and guidelines it needed to build its database. For example, ScheduleSoft requested information on the days and times when workers are available and when they are not available, the skills workers have for particular jobs, and the limitations and restrictions they bring to the job. One of the things that Daryl likes most about ScheduleSoft is the way its rules-based scheduling helps to ensure that every shift is properly balanced. Now that ScheduleSoft has filled its database and learned the scheduling rules, it can automatically generate schedules either by the day, week, month, year, or by the shift, department, or individual employee.

The schedule that ScheduleSoft produces is referred to as an “electronic calendar.” It not only shows each shift and who is working, but it also shows the non-duty assignments, such as vacation, sick leave, and training. Color highlighting makes it easy to distinguish different shifts and to spot the ones that are either understaffed or over-staffed. The program even assists in the selection of substitute workers based on rules established by the department. The electronic calendar provides an overview. The dialogs provide the detail. To make it very easy for an authorized user to get from the calendar to the dialogs, ScheduleSoft displays every worker’s name and every shift listed on the calendar as a hot link. A scheduler needs only to click on a name to open a tab-type menu.

From the dialogs listed on this menu a scheduler can view or change information about workers and their assignments. ScheduleSoft works the same way for shift information. Just by clicking on the Master Schedule a scheduler can access the dialogs needed to view or change the rules and data related to that shift. The best way to get maximum advantage from ScheduleSoft automation is to produce a preliminary schedule that projects the staffing needed to fill all the shifts a year or more into the future.

The ability to view the schedule that far in advance allows workers to plan ahead and negotiate for needed changes. Employees can see what the schedule requires and make agreements with their colleagues to cover for one another during vacation breaks. Five people at JFK International Air Terminal LLC have the security authorizations needed to change the electronic calendar. ScheduleSoft can track each change and display a record of who made each change and when and why that change was made.

ScheduleSoft tracks assignments by shifts, hours and user-defined accounting codes. It tabulates accrual rates and balances for vacation and sick time or anything else the department chooses to track. Users can view this information in the ScheduleSoft reports. The Reports menu offers ten basic reports. The user selects the content to display in these reports by responding to prompt dialogs that appear when a report type is selected. The Terminal Four group uses the Monthly Schedule Report most frequently. Daryl favors the Monthly Schedule Report for two reasons: “Employees can view their schedules in advance and determine fairness for themselves. We can also use this report to quickly spot potential conflicts or discrepancies.” The Individual Report will display a worker's shift assignments for any specified period with any overtime conspicuously highlighted.

The Problem Day Report lists days in the schedule having unresolved worker assignments. And, if Daryl wants to know who is currently scheduled to work, the Roll-Call Report shows all the workers on duty, and the start and end times of their shifts. Some reports can be useful as much to the Accounting Department as they are to the scheduler. For example, the Work Summary Report shows shift assignments by department and displays each worker’s hours plus their over-time hours. This information can be projected ahead for schedule planning or used after the work has been done for Payroll reporting.

Now you have all the information needed to calculate the payroll. Since its arrival at Terminal Four of the JFK airport, ScheduleSoft has been taking off all over the nation. The reason is simple: as Daryl Jameson puts it, “ScheduleSoft has allowed us to more efficiently manage our employee scheduling needs.” ScheduleSoft® is a registered trademark