Labour

Turn the forecast into the labour plan, hour by hour.

Outlay Labour shows the heads each area needs through the day, sets them against the team on shift, and tells you who to move and how much agency to order for the rest.

A Libra Europe product

The Outlay Labour demand graph for a whole estate: heads needed every quarter hour stacked by line and task across nights, days and afters, a dashed line for the permanent team on shift, and a hatched band where the plan is short.
Two plants and a distribution centre, planned together. Invented sites and volumes.

Every bar on the graph traces back to one line: volume × standard minutes ÷ 60 ÷ OEE.

One plant's day, heads by the quarter hour.

Labour plan · Plant A · Monday
Forecast to heads
A1 lineA2 linePrepPacking01020304006:0009:0012:0015:0018:0021:00Permanent team · 3006:00Cleandown4 spareSHORT AT PEAK0MOVED IN0AGENCY AT PEAK0 headsAGENCY HOURS0.0 h

Step 1 of 4: The day plays quarter hour by quarter hour.

Forecast volumes become hours, and hours become heads on each line.

From the week ahead down to who moves at half past midnight.

The agency order, line by line

Demand on each line is filled by the permanent team first, then by moves, and whatever is left becomes an agency booking matched to the skill that line needs.

The Outlay Labour assignments worksheet for one plant and shift: required hours and peak heads per line, cover split into permanent, moved and agency, and a panel of agency to book with the colleagues already assigned.
One plant's day shift, filled to a skilled agency order. Invented people and data.

Moves to call, in time order

The supervisor's list for the shift: at each time, who goes from which line to which, with cross-site moves marked so the travel time is allowed for.

The Outlay Labour moves list: times down the left, and for each time the colleagues to move with the line they leave and the line they join.
The moves for one day across the estate. Invented people.

Who can run what

Each spoke is an area, filled to the share of the window's heads that are trained on it, permanent team first and agency on top, so a skills gap shows before it becomes an agency bill.

The Outlay Labour skills view: a radar of cover by area with permanent and agency layers, headline counts of skills per head and single-skill heads, and lists of permanent and agency colleagues with their skill counts.
Skills and certificates across the estate. Invented people.

Planned against worked, a week and a year at a time.

The Outlay Labour reporting overview: week against plan, overrun for the financial year, agency spend, tool adherence and opportunity tiles above a rolling twelve-month chart of standard against actual hours.
Invented data.

Reporting

Standard against actual hours, overrun, agency spend and how often managers follow the plan, by week and by area.

The Outlay Labour dashboard for one week: hours required, share covered by the team, agency hours to order, agency cost and the saving from moving people, each site's day as a small demand curve, and a list of what needs doing.
Invented data.

The week ahead

Hours required across every site, the share the team covers once moves are counted, and the agency to order.

The Outlay Labour demand graph for one plant, stacked by line, with the permanent team as a dashed line and the short hours hatched above it.
Invented data.

One plant on its own

The same graph for a single site, with the busiest quarter hour called out and the order that would cover it.

What operations directors ask about the plan.

Can we see why it moved someone?
Yes. The plan is deterministic, so the same forecast gives the same plan. One switch compares it with the plan where nobody moves, and the difference is shown in hours and pounds.
Will it move people into work they cannot do?
No. Moves are only made between areas a person is trained for in the skills matrix, and every move carries a movement cost so the plan does not shuffle people for nothing.
What data does it need?
Forecast volumes, standard minutes for each task, the efficiency each area achieves, your colleagues and who is trained for what. Libra maps your existing data to those tables.
Can it plan more than one site?
Yes. Each plant can be planned on its own, the distribution centre by task, and the estate together, so trained spare heads at one site can cover another site's peak.
How does it reach our reporting?
Through a published API with scoped keys. A labour-facts feed gives Power BI the plan by day, site, area and hour, joined to the forecast and standards behind it.

One Outlay model of work, people and cost, in three products.

One Outlay model of work, people and cost, in three products: Outlay schedules a factory, Outlay Labour plans its labour hour by hour, and Outlay 3PL plans and runs a warehouse's shifts.

  • Outlay

    Production scheduling

    Turns demand and master data into a production schedule planned against real machine and labour capacity, then costs every run live against standard.

    Visit the Outlay site

  • Outlay Labour

    Labour planning by the hour

    Turns forecast volumes into the heads each area needs through the day and sets them against the team on shift, so agency covers only what is left.

    You are on the Outlay Labour site

  • Outlay 3PL

    Warehouse shift planning

    Turns the waves your WMS releases and the team on shift into a labour plan for every shift of the week, and shows the shift live on a map of the site.

    Visit the Outlay 3PL site

See your own forecast as a labour plan.

Talk to Libra about turning your forecast, standards and skills matrix into the heads each hour needs and the agency you actually have to order.

Talk to Libra about Outlay Labour

Tell us how you plan labour today, and we will walk you through the product.