Scheduling in Dynamic Environments

Introduction

It may be a truism but in complex, resource intensive industries, change really is the only constant. From the perspective of activity scheduling, resource optimisation and compliance management, such change presents challenges on multiple levels: How do you ensure resources are optimised as demand changes? How do you cope with changing regulation without impacting performance? And how do you adapt resourcing to meet the changing requirements in ways which enhance customer service, efficiency, and margins? Fortunately, leading resource optimisation and scheduling systems such as OneView have been specifically developed to address these challenges and, as a result, offer the potential to unlock new performance improvement opportunities.

Resource Optimisation in Dynamic Environments

In complex, resource intensive industries the pressure to drive margin improvement, whilst enhancing customer service and ensuring full regulatory compliance, is ever present. With resourcing normally being one of the largest variable cost drivers, and also a major contributor to customer service delivery, ensuring resource optimisation is therefore essential.

The challenge in achieving resource optimisation for large, distributed, multi-skilled workforces is, however, far from simple. It involves a vast array of variables, few of which are static. In particular, for many organisations, demand (in terms of capability, location, and time) may be subject to potential or actual change throughout the pre-deployment phases of a project.

Whilst adaptation of an existing activity schedule may be appropriate for minor changes, it is unlikely to remain compliant and effective in dealing with constant and major change. To ensure optimum and fully compliant solutions, the full range of potential scenarios need to be evaluated and selected on an informed basis. This demands scheduling systems which can handle the complexities of frequently changing environments by providing the analytics to enable accelerated and informed decision making.

Traditionally, many scheduling systems were insufficiently agile to react to new opportunities, changing demand or indeed wider circumstances such as meeting new regulatory requirements. Fortunately, the latest systems, such as OneView, have been developed specifically for such environments by being able to cope with multi-tiered change and provide rapid analysis to inform business critical decisions.