Childcare Centre
Day-of-Ops Planning
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We developed a Day-of-Operations planning app that allows a national Australian childcare service provider to optimally plan their workforce on-the-day and manage compliance risks.
Challenge
Prior to this engagement, we had developed a roster optimisation engine for the customer. While the roster optimisation engine generates efficient rosters and break/relief schedules in advance of daily operations, the childcare service provider understood that centres must optimally manage changes on-the-day to realise the efficiencies.
Traditionally, on-the-day planning was performed independently at each centre with no oversight and no structured process. Managers and assistant managers at each childcare centre would manually integrate staffing and child absences into the schedule, and manually manage complexities arising throughout the day. This lead to high variability in realised timesheet costs and vulnerability to compliance breaches across centres.
The service provider engaged us to develop an algorithm-driven day-of-operations planning application that could be used to manage planning on the day and integrate flexibly with their workforce management (Humanforce) and CCMS (Storypark Manage) solution stack.
Utilising mathematical optimisation and the Biarri Workbench platform, we developed a custom algorithm-driven software that is used to pre-plan the run sheet and re-plan staff on the day. The software includes multiple features which are used in sequence by managers in a standardised planning process:
- A staff requirement calculator that determines staff requirements and optimal room mixing to minimise staffing.
- A Gantt view of compliance which allows managers to visualise room/roof ratio compliance and validate shifts
- A relief assigner optimisation engine used to optimally plan/re-plan breaks, adjust activities and maintain room/ratio coverage while maximising continuity of care
- Visualise and broadcast the run sheet for the day to appropriate staff.
- Provides an audit trail of each centre.
The Biarri solution integrates with the provider’s technology ecosystem and provides a standard process for managers to manage changes on the day, identify/manage compliance risks, and identify opportunities to save cost by sending staff home early while maintaining compliance.