White Paper: 360 Scheduling: There Is Such A Thing As A Free Lunch!

In the Field Service industry, scheduling is about matching technicians to jobs whilst following a given set of business rules. So far so good. But the matching has to be efficient. No point in sending Bob to Birmingham, then to Manchester, back to Birmingham and then off to Manchester again. Not only will we end up with a rather cross Mrs Bob but we'll also rapidly run the business into the ground. So we introduce some simple rules: Bob lives near Birmingham, so we'll only ever give him jobs in Birmingham. Sorted. But wait, what if Bob has just finished a job and there is another one he can do just round the corner, but outside of his area. Surely Bob should do that job, but the rules simply won't allow it. Well, let's introduce another rule... The next day, Bob has two jobs to do but has time to do only one of them. Which one do we choose? How do we give one priority over the other? More rules. Service operations are notoriously complex and new constraints are rapidly followed by more new constraints and before you know it a mass of complex mutually conflicting rules submerges the poor souls trying to bring order out of chaos. Familiar story anyone?