SOS Labor Scheduling Toolkit

Generating Schedules with Tugboat's Employee Scheduling Software

Modeled on how schedulers typically develop labor schedules using production plans and labor standards, SOS provides a familiar and comprehensive frame of reference for generating, verifying and editing schedules. Tugboat's employee scheduling software enables managers to schedule an unlimited number of jobs and employees in:

• Shifts, including rotating and split shifts
• Lines
• Crews
• Departments
• Jobs with variable starting times

Rotating Shifts Software

Tugboat's comprehensive rotating shifts program defines the active crew for any period regardless of how complex the mixture of on-off work days. For any period in the future, Tugboat's shift rotations tools provide managers with an accurate and timely picture of who is:

• On the active crew
• Coming off a crew
• Scheduled to be on the next crew
• On leave: weekend, personal leave, vacation, etc.
• In training
• Available for call up

Absentee Scheduling and Tracking with Tugboat's Workforce Scheduling Software

Absentee scheduling and managing features of Tugboat's software for employee scheduling enable you to schedule absentees and record absences and other disciplinary events for each employee in your organization. Both the employee's past history and projected absences are managed through the employee scheduling software. Since schedulers need to know who is planning to be absent in order to create an accurate and reliable schedule, Absentee scheduling and tracking provides critical data to the labor scheduling engine.

• Absentee history available to employees on self-service Portal
• Integrated with Disciplinary Letters

Disciplinary Letters - Employee Scheduling

The Step Letters module of Tugboat's employee scheduling software assists your Human Resources department by automating the task of tracking and managing unexcused absences and other disciplinary events. Based on data captured in the Absentee module, employee scheduling software automatically alerts employees to excessive absenteeism by generating "Step Letters," where a Step Letter is a written disciplinary warning. Steps and Step Letters are defined by your management policies and the step letters are issued to an employee in response to their history. This employee schedule software module extends the management capability of SOS beyond labor scheduling by automating this time-consuming function.

• Absentee history available to employees on self-service Portal
• Integrated with Absentee Scheduling

Vacation Scheduling

For all employees in your organization, Tugboat's vacation scheduling module for employee scheduling enables you to:

• Define vacation quotas
• Calculate vacation entitlements
• Define vacation rounds
• Capture vacation requests
• Manage bidding and awards

Vacation scheduling extends the management capability of Tugboat's labor scheduling software beyond labor scheduling by automating the complex and time-consuming function of awarding, scheduling and tracking employee vacations. It automatically calculates vacation entitlements according to your eligibility and longevity policies. It awards and manages vacations in weeks, days or blocks of hours. It also automates vacation trading where workers request to be assigned to jobs that are open due to others being on vacation. The Vacation Module of the employee scheduling software provides critical data - who is going to out on vacation - required for accurate and reliable workforce schedules,

• Requests captured by self-service Portal
• Enables instant granting of vacation requests
• Pending vacation requests and history available to employees on self-service Portal

Event Scheduling

Tugboat’s new Event Scheduling tools include the ability to plan and schedule events for employees during regular shift-work job assignments. Events or meeting can last anywhere from 30 minutes to all day. Events scheduling ensures that each worker is scheduled to attend necessary training or quality-control meetings while the program also schedules a qualified backup to work during their absence.

Customers are under pressure to make the best use of the mix of skills in their workforce. Tugboat’s tools provide a way to cross-train workers even while the workers are usually punched in.

• Also tracks the training history for each worker.
• Automatically schedules related overtime

Skills Inventory Management

Tugboat's labor scheduling toolkit solution provides powerful tools for managing the all-important skills inventory management in your workforce. It is built on a comprehensive database which tracks skills and related data for each employee including:

• Training history
• When qualified
• Qualified by whom
• When last worked
• If challenged
• If temporarily disqualified
• Job preference

Tools are provided for scheduling training and refresher training, tracking job currency and managing open jobs due to employees leaving the workforce. Integrated with employee self-service Portal, employees can easily sign up for training and volunteer for open jobs. Comprehensive reports are provided for analyzing resources, researching shortages or bottlenecks and planning training strategies.

Job Bidding & Workforce Level Planning

Tugboat’s new tools for job bidding and workforce level planning:

• Enable customers to resize their workforce to their current production projections
• Enable workers to manage their own job bidding
• Automatically award related job bids.

The workforce level planning interface manages the desired number of jobs for each department and shift. Users can develop a list of minimum jobs required during both slow and peak times to assist in determining their desired staffing plan.

Tugboat’s tools enable employees to bid on job assignments during a downsizing or bid on new positions when production is again increased. Tugboat’s solution also awards the new job assignments according to HR policies.

Employee self-service Portal

The employee self-service Portal addresses the need for employees to interface with the scheduling office on a variety of matters. Available to your entire workforce at any time, the Portal extends the communication of both the scheduling office and a variety of human resources functions such as vacation planning, requests for time off, overtime, training, open jobs and more. It also enables workers to review their absence or credit history. Tugboat's labor scheduling software greatly reduces the workload of the HR staff and enables your employees to securely log requests for:

• Time off
• Vacations
• Personal days
• FMLA
• Overtime
• Job and shift preferences
• Training
• Open jobs

Also available

• Absence history, vacation requests
• Reports

Automated Overtime

This module provides a fully automated solution for filling open jobs with workers who have either volunteered or must be drafted for overtime. The automated overtime module of Tugboat's labor scheduling software significantly reduces the workload for supervisors and managers who are responsible for filling overtime while balancing requests from employees. Both full and split-shift assignments are automated. Like SOS's basic labor scheduling engine, overtime assignments are made strictly according to your work rules. This automated overtime scheduling software module is closely linked to the employee self-Service Portal, where employees are able to volunteer for overtime assignments.

• Automates both volunteer and forced overtime
• Requests captured by self-service Portal
• Handles overtime increments of four, eight, or twelve hours
• Supports overtime credits
• Supervisors are able to make individual assignments and adjustments as needed

Analysis and Reporting

Easily transform scheduling data into content for reports or business presentations with a combination of easy-to-use data analysis tools and convenient drag-&-drop functionality. Analysis and reporting tools are directly linked to an appServer which in turn accesses in real time the customer's SOS labor scheduling data base. This provides speed and power. Together these tools make data filtering and report design simple and quick. Reconfigure reports and sort or filter data as needed without having to initiate a development project with Tugboat Software.

Sold by Tugboat Software, Aurora tools are developed and supported by CornerStar Inc., specialists in business intelligence and data warehousing. They include:

• Report Viewer
• Analytics
• Report Designer