Labor Scheduling, Part 4

Abstract

After forecasting demand, determining staffing levels to meet that demand, and specifying which employees will be needed, a manager must still monitor the day's actual demand to ensure that the workforce schedule is serving customers' needs as intended. A key element in that determination is to assess whether the real demand is matching the forecasted demand. Moreover, that determination should be made as early as possible so that the manager can make mid-course corrections to the schedule, if needed. One way to make an early call about the day's demand is to develop graphs of the operation's historical demand for each day of the week and compare the current day's demand to those patterns. That comparison usually will give the manager a reasonably solid indication of what level of demand the operation will experience for the day. That indication, in turn, allows the manager to assess whether the demand forecasts underlying the day's schedule were accurate and, if not, to take necessary actions to adjust staffing levels. The greater the manager's certainty about the day's eventual demand level, the greater the possibility that the manager can make timely, on-the-spot adjustments to the workforce schedule.