Dedicated labor model for a units-based business that calculates labor needed based on units produced or consumed

Description

This requirement refers to a pre-built model that allows the input of units in any form (consumable, produced) which are used as drivers to calculate labor cost. This is most effective when used for hourly employee planning.

Example Use Case

Scenario: A manufacturing company utilizes their CPM software to align their workforce planning and budgeting with their production objectives. The system uses a dedicated labor model that calculates workforce needs depending on the units produced.

Solution: The CPM software is set up to calculate labor needs based on their unit production. For example, if they produce 1000 units of a product, the software calculates that they need X number of workers for Y hours. When their production increases to 1500, the software automatically calculates the increased labor demand.

Considerations

Most workforce planning models on the market simply load named employees, add a burden, and assign the values to accounts and departments. It is less common to see a pre-built labor model for production-based businesses like manufacturing, wholesalers, distributors, and anyone else moving product. This gap in the market has led to finance teams paying consultants to build custom models into their CPM tool, or worse moving back into Excel for this portion of the budget.

There are very simply ways to do this - create a table showing hours per role per unit of output and run a simple calculation. However, that only creates the hours needed for a particular output. What about health insurance, overtime, taxes, varying hourly rates, contract labor, and so on? This can get complex, hence the need for a proper workforce module to handle the planning calculations.

Questions to Ask a Vendor

• Pre-Built Model: Do you offer a pre-built model for unit-based workforce planning? If so, how flexible is it across industry types? We plan for (this type) of units. Does it accommodate that? (units could be physical items, phone calls, projects, anything that can be counted)
• Connection to Plan: Will the output of this unit-based workforce model push to the rest of the plan automatically?
• Exports: How can we export this data to HR to allow them to hire for the positions we need to keep up with forecasted unit demand?
• Labor Roles: How can the system be configured to add a group of roles for a number of units? For example, for 500 units we need 5 people on the assembly line, a supervisor, and a warehouse employee. Can that be setup?