Job Cover Matrix Feature Enhances Worker-to-Station Assignment
It is no secret that labor shortages create frequent worker scheduling and assignment for today’s assembly plants. Incorrectly assigned workers reduce throughput and create costly quality and safety problems. Proplanner’s new Job Cover Matrix solution is designed to leverage the worker historical sign-on data and the workstation qualification requirements to address this issue with minimal effort.
Human Resource (HR) departments often manage workers by reviewing the Clock-In/Clock-Out or Time Management systems. These systems typically indicate if an employee was available on a given day and how long they were present at the plant, and they may also know their Job Class and Qualification. Unfortunately, many of these systems lack details on which stations and operator positions workers have experience in or the detailed qualifications of those positions. This lack of factory and worker history detail often creates challenges for HR when assigning workers to dynamic operator positions in today’s tight labor market.
Proplanner’s new Job Cover Matrix solution is bridging this gap by incorporating operator qualification identification with the MES login history of that worker within the detailed operator work position and required qualification database of the Shop Floor MES. Combining the HR-based worker qualifications with the Shop Floor based workstation requirements now allows HR staff to quickly see where workers can and cannot be assigned on any given shift. Additionally, HR can identify gaps in worker training or experience that need to be resolved so critical jobs affecting factory throughput do not go unassigned. Finally, HR and supervisors can be notified via email or text message if workers sign into station operator positions for which they are unqualified or lack the necessary experience.
The system computes the gap between what skills the station demands and the skills of the operator and sends an alert to the team lead/ manager via email/text. In addition, this tool helps the management navigate their decisions on resource management, improves organizational planning, highlights strengths, and uncovers skill gaps.
- Data driven decision making for the HR department, project managers, and team leads. Takes a lot of the guess-work out of worker assignment, documents fairness in those decisions and allows less experienced staff to be very effective, much quicker.
- Centralized documentation of workstation requirements and operator qualifications, skill sets, certifications, and competencies.
- More insightful employee assignments based on station and operator qualification. Identifying the right people for the right job, improves production efficiency and job quality.
- Track employee development – establish a custom training program for employees based on their skill matrix.
- Improve companies’ internal mobility – Moving employees within an organization for job rotation can be easily managed.
- Mine JCM data to gather insights on operator recruitment and succession plans.
- Possible integration with time management systems (employee clock in/out).
- Automatically synchronize worker ID information between Shop Floor MES and HR/Payroll
The system consists of a table of worker information (name, qualifications, etc) a table of operator position station information (location ID, qualifications, safety equipment PPE) and a table of worker historical transactions. The Job Cover Matrix module then combines these three tables into the Job Cover Matrix view and report to highlight worker assignment options relative to station requirements. An overview of this matrix view and the input tables follow.
- Job Matrix View
- Worker information table, station and operator qualification, alert management, and JCM role privileges.
- Defining Qualifications to map to both workers and stations
- SFV Login: SFV Sign in/out screen and Notification page that shows warnings and PPE requirements.
- Worker sign-on transaction summary table
1. Job Matrix – The Job matrix report allows the HR managers and shop floor supervisors to validate the worker’s assignment to a given operator position “station” based on that worker’s experience and qualification requirements. Users can generate a Job Matrix report based on the assembly line, station, and list of workers assigned to that station during a specified date range. Employee experience is calculated based on the number of shifts the operator has worked in that station. The popup link in qualification will show the operator and station experience list.
The report also provides color-highlighting options,
- Green highlighting on the employee qualification – operator meets all the station qualification requirements.
- Employee experience – highlights depending upon the experience range specified by the user.
2. Worker Assignment – The employee assignment page enables the Engineers/ Line leads to allocate operators to the designated station by the available number of shifts – based on operator qualification and station requirements.
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Home station – validates whether the operator’s home station matches the assigned station.
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Sign-in/out times – shows if the operator has previously worked on that station. This assists the user during operator assignment.
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Worker (employee) fields in this table can be automatically synchronized with an external system.
3. Assigning qualifications – Station Qualifications
- Define a qualification reference name and description to be mapped to both Worker and Station
4. Station Management – Defining operator station work positions in Shop Floor Viewer MES and Mapping required qualifications to those stations.
- Added qualifications are assigned to line/station
- Select a line from the dropdown > Click edit station > required qualification can be selected
- Also where station safety equipment (PPE) requirements are defined.
5. Worker Sign-in/out report – This report is a type of transaction log which tracks each worker’s station sign-in/out time and other validation parameters, which include:
- If the worker sign-ins to their respective home station.
- If the signed-in station encompasses the operators list of available stations.
- Checks whether the worker meets the qualification requirements, and populates the missing qualifications if any.
Grace Barton
Marketing Specialist
About the Author Latest Posts
Grace Barton is a digital marketing and competitive intelligence professional who crafts strategic narratives by bridging marketing insights with analytical expertise. At Advantive, she creates engaging, data-driven content tailored to the distribution, manufacturing, packaging, and quality industries. Her goal is to deliver impactful messaging that drives engagement and growth based on specific gap closure needs, whether responding to sales organization requirements, pinpointing gaps in content, or meeting immediate market trends.
She thrives on transforming competitive intelligence into actionable insights for the sales organization. Grace manages Advantive’s competitive intelligence platform, Klue, to equip the sales team with the battlecards and market data they need to stay ahead of competitors. Since launch, she’s built 28+ battlecards across four lines of business, ensuring the GTM strategy stays sharp.
Grace has a passion for leveraging market insights with storytelling to guide strategic decision-making, empower sales organizations, and nurture organizational growth.
Areas of Expertise: Digital Marketing, Competitive Intelligence, Strategic Narratives, Marketing Insights, Analytical Expertise
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