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Efficient Facility Services: How to Achieve More with Smarter Scheduling & Planning

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How leading facilities management firms are using advanced planning and scheduling techniques to keep employees and customers happy while operating efficiently and profitably.

Whether insourcing or outsourcing facilities management and maintenance work, organizations face more pressure than ever to reduce operating costs in the short term without sacrificing service quality or driving up replacement and restoration costs long term.

The shift to a data-driven approach to decision-making is among the most cost-effective ways to achieve massive efficiency gains while also achieving other corporate objectives - especially when the data is used for preventative and repetitive maintenance planning and maintenance optimization, workforce planning and scheduling and other facility services planning and scheduling.

For example, both planned and reactive service and maintenance plans can be built based on data signals that reflect expected work demand as well as employee and skillset availability. Operational plans and schedules are further improved by incorporating real-time signals from IoT devices and sensors (eg showing that the oven has been used 865 times since the last service or that the outside air temperature over the past week has averaged a high of 91/33 degrees F/C, which could accelerate the need for HVAC service).

DecisionBrain provides powerful, custom-fit decision support software solutions that guide planners in making the best planning and scheduling decisions on strategic, tactical, or operational time horizons.



Here are some ways that DecisionBrain is helping facilities managers:

Dynamic Maintenance Planning
Intelligently plan service activities over the next year so that service frequency targets are met. Improve efficiency by grouping or bundling services based on proximity and skillset requirements. Use advanced machine learning combined with historical data to predict future reactive service demand. Smooth workload over time to minimize the need for contractors or overtime.

Strategic and tactical workforce planning and optimization
Intelligently decide which teams or employee types should do what work, when and where. Satisfy demand at the least cost while respecting a variety of constraints and preferences, such as distributing the work smoothly over the planning period.

Operational task assignment and scheduling of employees
Create optimal daily plans, schedules and routes based on the tactical plan combined with the latest activity history and sensor data. Re-plan in response to last-minute events, like high-priority repair tickets or employee absences. Efficiently interleave planned and reactive work, for example by opportunistically pulling forward upcoming planned work when it’s more cost-effective.

Demand Prediction using Machine Learning (ML)
Create demand forecasts based on ML models built off of historical performance data and any other correlated signals, such as weather, sales data, etc.

Download our Complete Guide to Workforce Optimization where we talk about how to use advanced planning and scheduling techniques to keep employees and customers happy while operating efficiently and profitably.

The 6-part guide spans topics such as:

- Cataloging employee skills and work activities
- Benchmarking performance metrics
- Handling uncertainty with forecasting and capacity planning
- Operational scheduling, tactical and strategic planning

 

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