Concept: Scheduling Optimization Engine

The Optimization Engine uses artificial intelligence to compare many possible scheduling scenarios to generate the schedule that most effectively meets your needs. The Optimization Engine creates schedules by taking these factors into account:

Labor demand needs.
Worker attributes (such as qualifications, availability, and preferences).
Your configuration and business objectives.

To create schedules, the Optimization Engine designs shifts by determining their length, start time, and end time. As the Optimization Engine designs shifts, it simultaneously assigns those shifts to qualified workers to meet labor demand needs. The Optimization Engine also optimizes the schedule to meet business objectives as much as possible while not violating any hard constraints.

The Optimization Engine relies on labor demand data defined at the scheduling organization (SO) level to generate schedules. You define labor demand for an organization by specifying:

The type of work that needs to be done.
The number of workers required to do the work.
The specific period of time in which the work needs to be done.

Shift length is determined by a combination of High Level Scheduling Organization (HLSO) settings and labor demand. The Optimization Engine doesn't create shifts that occur outside of the time period called for by the labor demand. The Optimization Engine also won't create shifts that violate minimum shift length validations, maximum shift length validations, or meal rules you've defined for the HLSO. The Optimization Engine instead creates meal periods as defined on the HLSO and attempts to stagger meal periods to best meet coverage requirements. If the Consistency setting is greater than zero, the Optimization Engine might also create shifts based on the start and end times of a worker's shift in the lookback period.

Workday never generates a schedule with unassigned shifts. If a worker isn’t available to be assigned to a shift, that shift isn't included in the schedule. Workday automatically indicates where there are gaps in coverage between the labor demand and the generated and assigned shifts. Workday also indicates where there might be overcoverage or undercoverage.

The Optimization Engine only creates schedules that don’t violate any of these fixed hard constraints:

Availability: If a worker has time off or a leave of absence without a scheduling effect that overlaps the shift, the worker is considered not available.
Maximum Shift Length: A shift can't be greater than the maximum shift length as defined by the HLSO.
Minimum Rest Periods between shifts.
Minimum Shift Length: a shift must be at least the minimum shift length as defined by the HLSO.
Meal Rules: a shift must comply with the meal rule defined by the HLSO.
1 shift per day: Workday will only automatically assign a worker to 1 shift per day, even if a worker has more than 1 position or more than 1 schedule tag assignment.
No overlapping shifts: a worker can't be assigned to more than 1 shift at a time.
Schedule tag qualification: a worker must be qualified for a shift through their schedule tag assignment to be assigned to the shift.

The only time a hard constraint could be violated is when consistency is enabled for the schedule week being generated. In this case, if a shift has been manually updated to violate a minimum or maximum hour or meal rule in the lookback period, it could be possible for that violation to be carried forward to the week being scheduled.

There are also relaxable hard constraints that are sometimes hard constraints and sometimes not. When they aren’t hard constraints, they’re referred to as objectives. You can configure whether these constraints are relaxable (and treated as objectives) or hard constraints through schedule settings:

Maximum weekly hours.
Maximum working days.

If the Optimization Engine is unable to find a schedule solution that doesn’t violate a hard constraint, the Optimization Engine might relax the Labor Demand hard constraint and the Minimum Weekly Hours hard constraint. The Optimization Engine treats these constraints as soft constraints so a solution can be found that doesn’t violate any of the other hard constraints.

As Workday Labor Optimization solves for hard constraints, it also attempts to meet the business objectives that are defined at the point of schedule generation. Adjustable soft constraints are objectives that the Optimization Engine attempts to respect as much as possible. When the Optimization Engine meets these constraints, it improves the schedule quality and score, but if the soft constraints aren't met, the Optimization Engine still generates a schedule. Soft constraints include:

Consistency
Demand Coverage
Labor Cost
Maximum Weekly Hours
Minimum Weekly Hours
Maximum Working Days
Preferred Days/Times
Preferred Schedule Tags
Preferred Weekly Hours

Soft constraints are configured by HLSO and weighted on a scale from 0-100. To configure the Optimization Engine to ignore a soft constraint, you can set the weight to zero. You can override these settings at the worker level. Worker level overrides take precedence over slider settings at the point of schedule generation.

Workday maintains intrinsic weightings that determine the relative importance of each of the soft constraints. These are Workday's intrinsic weightings from greatest weight to least weight:

Consistency.
Maximum Weekly Hours.
Minimum Weekly Hours.
Maximum Working Days.
Demand Coverage.
Labor Cost.
Preferred Weekly Hours.
Preferred Schedule Tags.
Preferred Days/Times.

These settings are automatically populated by the setting configuration on the HLSO.

When managers generate a schedule they can use sliders to control the weightings of different soft constraints. When a schedule is initially generated, Workday automatically places the sliders based on the settings defined for the HLSO. Once managers adjust the slider settings and generate a schedule, Workday carries forward the schedule settings to the next week.

The consistency value allows you to create schedules that are copies, or close to copies, from week to week. Consistency copies shift start and end times and meals, but not schedule tags. If the schedule setting is greater than zero, consistency will be weighted more heavily than all other soft constraints.

Workday looks back either 1 or 2 weeks (depending on HLSO or override configuration) to find a reference schedule to compare against. If the reference schedule includes time off, Workday looks back another single lookback cycle of 1 or 2 more weeks to find a week without time off. If Workday can't find a reference schedule for a worker the Optimization Engine ignores consistency for that worker.

If the consistency setting is greater than zero, and a shift exists in the reference week where you've manually overridden one or more of these rules, Workday might respect the manual override and bring it into the current week:

Meal.
Maximum Shift Length.
Minimum Shift Length.

If a shift in the reference week isn’t required to meet the current week's labor demand, Workday might still generate the shift within the current week.

After the Optimization Engine generates a schedule, it gives the schedule an overall score based on these dimensions:

Consistency.
Coverage.
Labor cost minimization.
Workers' preferred schedule tags.
Workers' preferred weekly hours.

Workday also provides a score for each dimension and a description of how the schedule met each dimension. The soft constraint weightings you defined don’t affect the schedule score or the scores of each dimension. Example: You set the

Consistency

weighting to

Low

. The Optimization Engine generates a schedule that includes shifts that aren't consistent with shifts in the prior lookback cycle. Therefore, the

Consistency

score will likely display as

Poor

.

When workers can take a shift without violating hard constraints (such as availability and schedule tag qualifications), Workday recommends them as replacement workers for existing shifts. Workday ranks recommended workers in order based on their replacement score. Workday displays a replacement score as a

Match %

. Workday calculates the

Match %

by taking these factors into account:

Workday considers workers with a higher pay rate or who will incur overtime as a lower match.
The further away the shift would take a worker from their preferred working hours, the lower their match score.
Workday considers the worker a match if any of their preferred schedule tags exist on the shift.