Auto Assign
Updated
by
Daniel Sjögren
Introduction
Quinyx Labor Optimization solution consists of two separate modules, Auto Schedule and Auto Assign. The goal of the solution is to automatically create schedules, considering your business objectives and aiming to minimize under-coverage and over-coverage while adhering to labor rules and organizational preferences.
Auto Assign
The Auto Assign module automates and optimizes the assignment of shifts to employees within the scheduling process. The algorithm takes the existing shifts in a schedule, whether they have been created by Auto Schedule, rolled out through Base Schedule, or have been created manually, and assigns any open shifts to employees. The assignment of shifts to employees considers availability, labor rules and business rules, agreement, skills, and already assigned shifts. The output of the Auto Assign algorithm is shifts assigned to employees within the selected unit.
Prerequisites
- There needs to be open shifts available to be assigned for the period for which you are attempting to assign shifts for.
- There needs to be employees with a matching skillset required to work the available shifts.
- There needs to be available employees within the schedule period.
- There needs to be employees with an active agreement with unfulfilled contract hours within the schedule period.
- Labor rules are defined either in Quinyx agreement templates, in Pythia (AI Optimization), or in both.
- Schedule parameters are defined in Pythia (AI Optimization).
- The Auto Assign module needs to be enabled and configured by Quinyx.
Auto Assign Configuration
The Auto Assign module considers labor rules defined in agreement templates and in Pythia (AI Optimization) and parameters as well as employee specifications such as availability, absences, skills, and agreements to assign open shifts to employees.
Labor Rules
Through labor rules and business rules, you are able to control what rules should be taken into consideration when Auto Assign assigns shifts to employees. Labor rules and business rules can be configured in Quinyx and/or in Pythia (AI optimization). In Quinyx the labor rules that can be considered in the Auto Assign solution are configured in the agreement templates, while any additional rules are configured in Pythia (AI Optimization).
The Auto Assign solution can consider both soft (preferential) rules and as well as hard (mandatory) rules. This is defined per every single rule. Rules that are considered mandatory will not be violated in the shift assignment process. Rules that are considered preferential can be weighed against one another in order to specify the order of importance of rule adherence. As such, you are able to define what is important for you to consider when assigning shifts.
The Auto Assign solution will assign shifts while considering the labor rules and the priorities of the preferential rules in order to achieve the most optimal schedule within those constraints.
Fairness rules within Auto Assign
Fairness is an important aspect of a good schedule next to labor rules and business rules. To account for fairness in the schedules created by the Quinyx Auto Assign solution, you can use any of the below fairness rules to accomplish this:
- Equal relative contract fulfillment: a rule that aims to ensure that when there are not enough shifts to fulfill all contract hours, we will aim for a relative contract fulfillment. E.g. we prefer to ensure that multiple employees fulfill 80% of their contract hours, rather than some employees fulfilling 100% while others fulfill 60%.
- Equal shift type distribution: a rule that aims to equally distribute specific shift types across available employees. E.g. we prefer to ensure that a specific shift type that is physically more constraining is equally distributed.
- Rotate shifts of a specific type: a rule that aims to ensure that specific types of shifts are rotated and equally distributed across employees. E.g. we prefer to ensure that night shifts are distributed and rotated across available employees.
Availability
Within Quinyx's Auto assign solution, we are able to consider the availabilities provided by the employees, through the Availability function, to indicate when they are available to work. Scheduling according to availability within our Auto assign solution can be considered a hard requirement or a soft requirement.
If the availability provided by the employees is considered a hard requirement it means that Quinyx Auto assign solution is not allowed to schedule employees outside of their provided availability. If the availability provided by the employees is considered a preferential requirement it means that Quinyx Auto assign solution prefers to assign employees within their provided availability but if that is not possible, assigning shifts outside of their provided availability is also an option.
Skills
The Auto Assign solution only assigns shifts to employees where the employees fulfill the skill requirements of the shifts.
Absences
The Auto Assign solution considers absences and ensures that employees are not assigned shifts on the days where they are absent.
Parameter Configuration
Through the parameter configuration, you are able to define the technical details of the algorithm run, among others, the maximum runtime before the algorithm needs to provide a result and the objectives of the runs when comparing for example costs and adhering to rules. The parameters are configured by Quinyx, depending on your objectives, during the initial set-up of the Auto Assign solution.
Auto Assign Creation
Read more about how to trigger Auto Assign and follow up on the progress of the algorithm runs here.
