http://blog.tugboatsoftware.com Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:31:33 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en January 26, 2012 One of our General Mills customers recently re-bid 96 jobs. This was due to installation of some new equipment. When they’ve had to do this in the past, with a workforce of over 400, this was an administrative nightmare: the workers filling out individual bid sheets, sorting through ... http://blog.tugboatsoftware.com/staffing-level-planning-job-bidding/ Newport Beach, California based business software developer Tugboat Software has recently announced the introduction of new tools which automate job bidding. They are designed to allow organizations to align workforce levels with changing production demand. These new tools are employee-driven and enable workers to engage in the job bidding process ... http://blog.tugboatsoftware.com/tugboat-software-introduces-new-job-bidding-tools/ Software development experts Tugboat Software have announced the introduction of a new application to their existing roster of innovative work schedule program optimization solutions. The company’s new vacation scheduling application is engineered to capture and manage employee vacation requests through an online self-service portal. Through the solution’s comprehensive data access functionality, ... http://blog.tugboatsoftware.com/work-schedule-program-innovators-tugboat-software-introduces-employee-driven-vacation-scheduling/ Newport Beach, California workforce scheduling specialists Tugboat Software have recently announced the introduction of their latest new capability for their laboroptimization of workflow within manufacturing facilities. The company’s new workforce scheduling application  now includes the ability to plan and schedule events for employees during regular shift work job assignments. As part ... http://blog.tugboatsoftware.com/tugboat-software-introduce-event-scheduling-for-their-work-schedule-program/ Amongst pressures faced by manufacturing operations today, matching the size of one’s workforce to their projected production requirements is a growing challenge. Tugboat’s new job bidding tools include a labor planning interface that manages the desired number of jobs for each department and shift. Users can develop a list of ... http://blog.tugboatsoftware.com/from-workforce-level-planning-to-job-bidding/ Creating a labor schedule is a key engineering step in your production planning cycle. Given your multiple products and deadlines over multiple shifts, days or weeks and given the volatility of any pool of labor resources, can your production plans be completed on time? Whether work orders are created in ... http://blog.tugboatsoftware.com/from-erp-to-labor-scheduling/ Even if an application appears to really meet one’s needs, there is always the challenge of implementation. A financial manager for Coca-Cola recently asked, “This application looks like it will do the job but answer this: how much trouble will we uncover when it comes to implementation?” He was specifically ... http://blog.tugboatsoftware.com/implementation-early-payback/ In large manufacturing facilities, it’s not hard to find managers who’ll acknowledge, on any given day, there may be extra workers on the floor. Sometimes referred to as redundant manning this sounds like an easy target when looking for labor waste. But is it? Yes and no. Here’s the difference. Under ... http://blog.tugboatsoftware.com/extra-man-right-or-wrong/ What are the “Best Practices” (BP) for workforce scheduling? Most managers in operations and HR would like to see these documented. But what is BP?  BP is a method, process, or activity, which conventional wisdom regards as more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other method, process, etc. ... http://blog.tugboatsoftware.com/labor-scheduling-best-practices-past-practices/ An Automated Labor Scheduling (ALS) solution is only as good as the data it uses and here’s the data we’re going to need. There are five different types of data: 1.    Production Plans 2.    Jobs 3.    Employees 4.    Absences 5.    Skills Inventory Although there’s more to be covered, Production Plans are addressed in our blog post ... http://blog.tugboatsoftware.com/skills-inventory-institutional-knowledge/