AutoShifts

Most industries are shift based (security, transportation, healthcare, hospitality, entertainment, manufacturing, etc). Shift managers needs 1-3 days per month to assign employees to shifts; and are faced with ever changing business needs, labor legislation and employee demands. 

Our solutions enables managers to automatically assign employees to shifts according to preset requirements and employees demands. Furthermore task teams can be created (standard or dynamic formation) - considering employee or business needs (highly skilled employees with less qualified, certain skills within a team), of people who need to work together; or they can't. 

As a case, consider a hospital where volunteers with specific skills may join a hospital's staff in a crisis event to work alongside with regular staff - they have to fit the new hospital needs (increased staffing), join preexisting teams, maybe replacing some member of existing staff and work alongside with others - also monitoring their results and patients.

The problem - Assigning employees to shifts and teams

Many industries affected (transportation, hospitality, healthcare, security)

Many employees affected (pressure due to shift working, social and family life pressure)

Many business affected (employee turnover, labor legislation constrains)

Many users affected (e.g. hospitals patients may have higher risk in cases of poor teams or employees working overtimes, or virus affected)

Potential users 

25000 hospitals

500 security companies

10000 retailers

20000 hotels 

our list keeps growing: transportation, entertainment, manufacturing, call centers

Impact on users is significant:

- hospital patients who will receive better care

- more effective task teams organized

- less stress to employees and as a direct result, reduced employee turnover 

reduced costs for business in terms of shift planning and assignment, cost to hire and train employees, penalties related to labor legislation issues regarding shift planning

major impact to societies in terms of crisis situations - e.g. how we can use additional resources (e.g. volunteers or third party's employees) to cover extra needs or trace events (tasks accomplished or patients taken care by specific teams and employees); 

a tool for scenario building of employees required per shift in specific situations (min/max employee number and skills required per shift)

Our software enables shift managers to enter their business needs such as number of shifts, skills required per shifts, and a number of custom made rules which can vary across departments, companies and countries (due to differences in labor legislation). 

Furthermore the system includes information regarding employees, their skills and availability, their preferences. 

The system uses a set of algorithms to assign employees to the proper shift according to the criteria examined, or assign employee to task teams.

To accomplish this a variety of technologies were used, including C++, Java, elements of AI, and databases (MySQL, SQL and Oracle) while further development takes place regarding AI (Machine Learning), Genetic Algorithms and Greedy/Optimization Algorithms

The process is really simple to the end user - once employee data are imported and business rules are selected and defined according to the organization's needs the user receives a proposal for the shifts assigned for the next period (which can be customized)

First of all, shift managers in a wide range of industries will find it easier to plan the shifts - they will be able to create schedules within minutes, making sure that they are fully compatible to their business needs, labor legislation and - to the extend that this is possible - to employee demands.

Employees will experience a major change by having their special requests fulfilled (days off, specific teams of co-workers) making their job less stressful and avoiding overtimes.

However there are two main areas for significant impact;

Organizations will have tools to immediately and automatically create scenarios for special situation (e.g. Crisis Levels 1, 2 and 3), to immediately increase capacity, create new task teams (using additional employees with certain skills or special needs) or work under special conditions (reduced employees due to covid-19, or employees with specific skills)

Finally users will experience a direct impact in terms of the quality perceived, across different Key Performance Indicators per industry:

Better teams and less stressed employees will result less human mistakes and  better care conditions in healthcare and hospitality, less accidents in transportation, faster response to security issues, and other KPIs across different industries. 

Our solution directly affects issues regarding Healthcare, and already examined as part of the Greece Vs Covid 19 Action. 

We can identify 2 case scenarios:

1. Organizations that needs to keep operation and reduce employees in site can set up different scenarios to create effective teams that will ensure that all key and critical activities remain operational. 

2. Hospitals may increase their capacity by accepting volunteers or transfer personnel from other hospitals - these newcomers will be effectively manage in (increased) shifts and form joined task teams with the existing personnel based on skills.