Our Software
Our staffing model monitors the manpower and skills available in order to compare them with the required resources according to the plan. The software then tells you if you are correct, under resourced or over resourced. The plan can then be altered to take account of the available resources on each shift which will also adjust the adjacent shifts. Being under resourced on one shift might slow down the plan with knock-on effects to the next shift, or cause the preceding shifts to alter their plans. Being over resourced can affect the subsequent shift by producing too much output that cannot be handled. Think of a bakery that is over resourced in one shift and produces extra batches and under resourced in the next shift so the products cannot be dispatched to the supermarket. Or a brewery that manages to produce an extra batch of beer, but cannot access enough containers to store it in. There are many such common problems caused by insufficient information about staffing resources in all the different time frames; by shift, or day, or week, or month or year. All of these quantities need to be known continuously and they need to be 'live'. Thus if a holiday is booked by one person, the effects of this booking can be assessed immediately against the plan. The plan can then be changed if the effect is detrimental, or the resources reorganised to bring the plan back on track. Changing the plan might seem a drastic measure just to accommodate one holiday, but if we had 100 staff think of the 3000 holidays we would need to plan for, then being able to change the plan quickly and assess the new plan is an essential part of the planning and control process.

Planning initially looks at the long term. It is used to see what you would like to do, such as 'make something', supply something, provide something, or sell something. This requires knowing the manpower available at any time and their associated skills. This is provided in our staffing models, shift by shift for a year, or longer, in advance, in an easy to read format. This format details every shift so that the total number of hours of available work are known at all times. The format can also count down these hours for the rest of the year.
  


In order to retail staff you need to tell them when you require them to work and when they are rostered off so they can plan their lives around the shift pattern to achieve a work/life balance where their social does not affect their worklife. Therefore you need to plan their work for a long time into the future.

Production Control works on a different level to Production Planning. Production Control is all about setting up the means to stick to the plan and is usually based on short time frames.

For instance, the Production Plan, using forecasting methods, might call for 100,000 hours of work by a group of staff. In a Call Centre for instance, the total time spent on calls and wrap-up could be 100,000hrs consisting of 300,000 calls a year, where each call takes 5 minutes with 15 minutes to complete the paperwork associated with the call.

Whatever the industry or service is, a key part of planning is to determine the number of staff required to fulfil the plan. Usually the work is calculated as an Annual amount, such as 100,000 hours, but it could be calculated as a monthly amount, 8000hrs, or weekly amount, 2000hrs. An Annual amount of hours also has the advantage of being compatible with an Annual Budget and holidays. It also mitigates the effects of variations in workloads during the year due to seasonality of the work.

Production Planning can then focus on the long term strategy of achieving 100,000hrs of work during the next year. This involves, procurement of materials, utilities, equipment and space for materials, finished goods, equipment and people. The Planning process also decides on the most appropriate shift pattern to use, and how many hours of work can be supplied by the shift pattern.