About Labor Planning

Labor planning allows you to specify the amount of time to be spent by labor (people, machines) on operations (segment, planned unit). These times are specified when you create/edit a route.

Labor plans can be exported/uploaded to external schedulers (including ERPs) to inform execution planning and scheduling decisions. Labor plans are not used by execution; however, labor records created during execution may be used to compare execution against plan along multiple dimensions, including operator, line, product, etc.

There are four labor planning types for which times can be set:
  • Setup: Time to prepare a machine (e.g., tooling, warm-up, pressurization, adjustments, calibration) or operator (e.g., don PPE).
  • Run: Time to execute an operation.
  • Inspection: Time to inspect or test a lot at an operation.
  • Transport: Time to move a lot into, or out of, a work center; or bring material to a work center.
For each labor planning type, for both machines and people, times can be set for a:
  • Lot: Time for the entire lot to be completed.
  • Item: Time to complete a single item in the lot.

Labor Types

Labor types are user-extensible records for tracking the labor performed. Labor types must be associated with labor planning types to enable comparison between actual execution times and standard times. Plant Apps includes the following labor types:
  • Direct: Work done as part of making a product.
  • Setup: Work done to set up a machine or workstation.
  • Rework: Work done to address a defect or deficiency.
  • Indirect: Work done on an operation that doesn't fit into any of the above types.

Using REST APIs, additional Labor Types can be created and associated with Labor Planning Types.

Labor Codes

Labor codes are a set of scaling factors for each labor planning type that can be applied to a labor plan to generate another, calculated labor plan. Labor plan scaling factors limit the amount of configuration needed to generate multiple labor plans for a scheduler. A single scaling factor is a float - positive or zero - that is multiplied with a labor plan value to generate a new labor plan value. As such, a scaling factor of 1.0 means to use the planned value unchanged.