You may have the most skilled team but planning how to use them in the best possible way is the tough part; isn’t it? Planning and utilizing your people in the most efficient way on various projects help organizations in achieving their business objectives and staying profitable. But imagine if you do not have a realistic view of things such as who are the people in the organization, what is the time and effort they spend on various projects, and what resources they need to complete their work, then your business plans won’t succeed. Resource planning is basically a strategic approach to make sure that all your resources are being utilized in the most efficient manner. When resource planning and is done properly, organizations are able to achieve capacity optimization and efficiency, without employees being under- or over-utilized. Talking of specific industries, like capacity planning in aerospace, is of utmost importance because of the higher stakes and risks involved.
Defining Resource Planning
The process of dividing all the tasks and projects to employees based on their expertise, skill sets, capacity, availability, and best fit for that job is termed as resource planning. This involves allocating tasks and activities to various human and non-human resources with the key objective of maximizing efficiency. Resource planning helps project and resource managers in managing their existing team’s utilization and achieve capacity optimization so that the projects stay within the set budget.
Top Resource Planning Techniques
Some of the top resource planning techniques that can help you achieve capacity planning in aerospace industry are:
- Resource forecasting: One of the most important and foremost tasks of project management is to define the project scope and to break it up into tasks and sub-tasks. A project manager should use historical data from previous projects to accurately forecast the resource requirements for all the tasks and activities in the project and what can be the estimated timeline.
- Resource allocation: This technique assesses the available capacity, who and what are the resources at hand, and the schedule of the project. Then, the resources are allocated to every single task. In case, the resources are not sufficient, then you need to arrange them as and when needed. It is important to consider the required skillset in mind before hiring new people.
- Resource leveling: This technique is used to maximize resource allocation and for capacity optimization by amending the project schedule over time so that any resourcing conflicts or misallocation like over-booking resources, can be corrected.
- Resource utilization: When the project is in the development phase, it becomes critical to track the effort being utilized by team members on a daily basis. Monitoring and managing the resource utilization here becomes imperative. This metric also helps in capacity optimization as the aim is to utilize the allocated resources in the most efficient manner.
- Resource smoothing: This technique helps to optimize your resource allocation by using total or free float without impacting the critical path. Free float is defined as the time by which a scheduled activity can be possibly delayed from its early start date without pushing forward the project end date.
- Resource visibility: Dashboards, reports, and some other advanced tools help a project and resource manager to visualize if the workload is distributed in a balanced way and if resource utilization in the project is satisfactory. Using a resource management tool helps in gaining this visibility and in efficient resource management.
- Resource capacity planning: This is a technique used to oversee resource planning and manage people across multiple projects. Resource capacity planning is the process of assessing if the allocated resources are adequate for completing the projects on time. It also helps to determine if the number and the number of resources, the skills, and the level of those skills, are sufficient for a specific project team.
Role of a Resource Planning Software in Capacity Planning in Aerospace
Implementing a resource planning tool not only helps companies carry out their operations and complete their projects in a streamlined way, but they can also stay within the budget and ensure customer satisfaction. Read on to find what is the role of a resource planning tool in capacity optimization and other benefits it has in store for you.
1. Efficient project planning
For managing multiple projects seamlessly, you should be able to handle your team well. You also need to manage a distributed team that may have several resource types, stakeholders, maybe vendors, etc. Such a tool helps you plan multiple projects efficiently and end-to-end. You begin by defining all tasks and sub-tasks, identifying the right resources, estimating the time and effort required to complete the projects, and determining the skill set required. A resource planning software also identifies dependencies for you and helps you manage multi-project planning in a breeze.
2. Central repository for all key organizational data
If you are working with a remote team, sharing data or important files is quite tough. Your team members or various stakeholders may be based in different locations or even geographies. Ensuring data privacy and no version issues happening becomes difficult. It is also very tough to find the best-suited resources across the verticals when a new requirement comes. But using a resource planning solution for sharing data, important reports, and dashboards becomes quite easy. A resource planning tool like eResource Scheduler enables you to upload files, save and organize your data, easily review, edit, or share files or documents in just a few clicks.
3. Customization options
Leading resource planning tools provide customization options too. This means that the tool lets you add various categories, and design various custom views, just as you like or suit your individual requirement. You can also shortlist resources by their names, roles, designations, expertise, skillset, experience, etc. A top-rated, AI-enabled resource planning software such as eResource Scheduler offers custom fields where you can type in a description for the resource and manage customizations according to your specific need.
4. Assign best-fit resources to the projects at hand
If a project manager will have clear visibility about all the employees, projects, and teams in the organization, then they can easily check their availability and utilization and make decisions accordingly. Or if you’ve aligned some team members on some projects and they are over-booked, then a resource planning tool would highlight that and help you achieve workload balance and capacity optimization. With such a tool, you can easily log in and find which team member is assigned which task or project, the status of it, and their performance and utilization. The advanced filters help you trace the best people for a job according to their interests, availability, competencies, etc.
5. Clear idea about what should be scaled and when
Every business goes through its ups and downs. So there may be times, when your team members are overbooked, but in contrast, some other times could be lean. So, managing the fluctuations in workload distribution including the awareness of when to hire more people and with what skills, is very important. Capacity planning in the aerospace industry is particularly important because of the higher cost of projects and the risk involved. A resource planning tool helps project managers to manage the workload and distribute it evenly so that some top performers are not always overbooked, which may lead to burn-out, dissatisfaction, and eventually attrition. A tool such as eResource Scheduler guides you to determine when to hire more resources and with which skills or maybe request some internal movements for some time.
6. Track projects, deadlines, and performance on a regular basis
To stay on top of things, project managers should have a realistic view of their team members, the status of projects, how each project is progressing as per the timelines, and utilization. To do all this and more, implementing a resource planning tool is a good idea. It not only gives you the flexibility to amend plans on the way, if needed, but also keeps tracking your projects, team’s performance, capacity, workload, and their utilization in real-time. It also flags any likely challenges or loopholes, and you can find a solution for it well in advance.
7. Detailed reports, data, and graphical dashboards
Imagine if you could get a hold of detailed reports and dashboards to analyze your team’s productivity, performance, the status of projects, utilization, etc. A resource planning tool helps managers to monitor the performance of their team, pull out availability reports, and design graphical dashboards to showcase to the management in just a few clicks. The right tools offer automated skill matching, which helps you plan your resource needs for pipeline projects easily and manage capacity planning in aerospace.
8. Multiple permission levels are granted as per roles
The right resource planning tool permits multiple permission levels for different roles. A cloud-based and AI-enabled resource planning tool enables streamlining your processes and provides permission levels to employees as per their designation, responsibilities, roles, etc. So, a manager may be able to review some data or files but a team member could only view what tasks are assigned to them, the timelines, the project plan, and fill in timesheets. What’s more? The tool allows you to grant view-only permission to stakeholders and customers to view reports and dashboards, the status of projects, plans, etc.
9. Real-time tracking and cost management
A resource management software gets updated in real-time, which makes tracking the utilization and status of projects and resources possible on a regular basis. You can easily monitor how your projects are progressing, and if everything is on track or not. If there are some challenges and you need to realign some more resources to a specific project, then you can do that in some simple steps. Besides capacity planning and optimization, a resource planning tool also helps you to control the overall budget right from the start till the project delivery.
Master Capacity Planning in Aerospace Sector with eResource Scheduler Cloud
eResource Scheduler is a leading Cloud-based, multi-user solution that helps you to resolve resourcing challenges, identify any loopholes, and achieve capacity optimization and utilization. This tool streamlines your resource and project management, workload distribution, and a lot more. You can opt for the best-suited plan of this resource planning tool depending on the number of employees in your team or organization. If you want to give it a try first, go for a free trial today and get personalized support to configure the tool when you buy it. This tool’s features such as an intuitive interface, user access rights, resource request, unlimited projects and bookings, gap reporting, and above all the timesheet module, make it one of the top-rated solutions globally. So, if you’re looking for a solution for capacity planning in the aerospace industry, eResource Scheduler Cloud is the best choice.
