Labatt | Case Study

Specific Services: .NET DEVELOPMENT; MATHEMATICAL OPTIMISATION; PROCESS OPTIMISATION; SYSTEMS INTEGRATION; UX – USER EXPERIENCE

Category: Web application

DESCRIPTION

The Labatt brewery in Lasalle, Montreal, is the biggest in Canada, with 5 production lines. It called on Spiria to develop a Web-based automated scheduling and employee work-hour optimisation system.

Results

2966

Labatt employees benefit from the Web-based application developed by Spiria.

Labatt departments use the on-line automated scheduling and work-hour management platform.

Years of use and production with the Labatt Web-based application.

THE PROBLEMS

Each department used its own schedule management process, making scheduling management an extremely complex task.

Scheduling was done entirely by hand, greatly increasing the risk of errors.

Several key scheduling managers were due to retire all at once.

The upshot was that Labatt was receiving too many scheduling-related grievances.

Technical Challenges

Mathematical Optimisation

Developing and adapting a mathematical model tailored to the numerous and complex variables specific to Labatt’s.

Simulation

The Web-based application had to enable scheduling managers to try out various scenarios in order to pick the best solution.

User Experience

The Web-based platform had to have a Web-based interface that would enable users to make changes to their schedules.

Call-List Management

The system lists employees in the call-out order established by collective agreements, which was a challenge before this task was automated.

Employee Lending and Mobility

The system had to allow for the exchange of employees between departments and a certain amount of mobility among the staff.

A CUSTOM-MADE, COMPLETE, WEB-BASED SCHEDULE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION:

Labatt’s new Web-based platform had to be self-managed. It had to be capable of managing schedules in real-time while following collective agreement rules in order to avoid employee grievances.

It had to do all that, and include the following features:

Automated schedule generation: The Web-based application had to automatically plan employee schedules while following collective agreement rules, using a mathematical optimisation model.
The Web-based punch-clock system had to automatically calculate normal working hours and link to the payroll system.
It had to automatically calculate overtime hours worked.
The user platform had to be simple and efficient. First and foremost, the Web-based application had to be efficient, in order to speed up processes while reducing grievances.