Planning by skills: who is allowed on which order

In a small company it works intuitively: the manager knows the team and knows who is up to which job. The problem starts the moment someone else does the planning or the team grows.

What happens when you plan by availability alone

• The technician arrives and finds out they are not qualified for the job. The site visit is repeated.
• Or they do the job without the qualification. That is worse and shows up later.
• The experienced technician goes out on everything, because it is a safe bet. They get overloaded and the rest of the team learns nothing.
• The customer gets an offer of appointments that, in the end, no qualified person can take.

How to set up skills

Four mistakes keep coming up during setup.

Do not start with a complete catalogue

A matrix of twenty skills and fifteen technicians will not survive in daily operation. Start with five to eight skills that actually decide who can go where. Add the rest as needed.

Separate out what affects planning

A skill only makes sense if you sometimes decide differently because of it. If anyone can do a given job, do not create a skill for it; it would only get in the way in the filter.

Name them in your own words

Gas, refrigeration, electrical up to 1000 V, welding, forklift, inspections, commissioning. Use exactly the words you use in the team meeting. Anyone who has to translate the names will not use the filter.

Deactivate, do not delete

If a skill stops being used, deactivate it. Deleting it loses readable history on older orders.

A good skill list is one you can make decisions by. A bad one is one nobody filters by.

Combining skills

The benefit shows when filtering by several skills at once. A job that requires both electrical and gas does not have to be split between two technicians if one meets both. The filter returns directly the technicians with all the required skills.

Skills and the appointment offer

The biggest benefit comes from linking skills to the appointment offer. If the offer is generated with a skills filter, it contains only the days of technicians with the required qualification. That removes the whole category of problems of the type appointment confirmed, but we have nobody to send.

When the rule is not followed

Occasionally a technician without the relevant skill will go out on a job, because nobody else is available and the customer needs help immediately. That is a legitimate decision and the system should not forbid it, only flag it. The difference between a warning and a ban is the difference between a tool that is used and a tool that is worked around.

A side benefit

After a few months, the skills records tell you more than the plan: where the team is thin. If only one technician has a given skill and is permanently busy, it is not their problem, it is a risk for the company. That gives you grounds for a decision on training or hiring.