Industry & Manufacturing

A factory approached RCOR with the goal of automating the process of assigning workers to workstations on their production line. The factory has 50 workstations, and the current process of assigning workers is conducted manually, making it unresponsive, inflexible, and time-consuming. As specialist software is extremely expensive, the factory asked RCOR to automate the process using Microsoft Excel. To solve the problem in its simplest form, RCOR focused on creating an Excel spreadsheet that would take a list of available workers, a list of required positions, and a matrix of employee skills to produce a coherent schedule. From there, they could look for solutions that met other conditions, such as keeping defined groups together and maintaining consistency from one day to the next. The spreadsheet developed by RCOR allows a user to enter the required positions and define preferred groups on the production line. They can then click a button to import available employees, experience, and run the algorithm. The complete schedule is displayed in the spreadsheet, along with a report on any unavoidably outstanding resources (such as new starters), enabling users to fill in any gaps manually. Overall, the Excel spreadsheet developed by RCOR has helped the factory automate the process of assigning workers to workstations on their production line, saving time and improving efficiency.