Block Scheduling Tool

 

The Block Scheduling Tool (BST) allows a repair facility to set up weekly placeholders to reserve spots to manage expected but unknown Repair Orders, for example, repairers who have agreements with insurance companies to drop cars off. This will also allow repairers to reserve slots to fill with towed-in vehicles. For example, in the fall we see an uptick in the number of deer hits and we want to hold capacity open to be filled by those jobs.

For instance, an insurance company has vehicle owners drop off an average of 3 cars per day at a repair facility. On average, the size jobs are estimated to be 12, 24, and 36 hours ROs each day. Rather than reducing the total number of hours CR Auto Scheduler tries to schedule each day to allow for unscheduled work, the tool creates a block reservation for the repairer to place the dropped vehicles into. This is especially important if the repair center wants to use the Automatic Work-In-Process Calculator.

 

Setup is located under Optimization.

              Repair Order Blocks

 

Create Repair Order Blocks

 

1.       This is the name of the block, This will display on the Dashboard and Calendar as Month/Day, Name, Size of job.   Example (10/12, Progressive 12)

2.       Starting the next full week, (the update takes place at 3 AM Sunday morning) the tool will load the new block into the schedule. In this case, the tool will load the same reservation block for the next 12 weeks.

You will want to have the block placed beyond the week you are scheduling for. So, if you are booking work in two weeks from now, you will want this number to be 3 or more.

3.        Please select the payment source from the drop-down. When the tool creates the block it will use the cycle and supplement for the payment source selected, just as it does to a regular job.

4.       Put the number of hours you would like to make a reservation block for, choosing also the day of the week you want the block.

5.       Add Block, will add another block line to allow multiple blocks to be added and maintained at once.

6.       Create, once this is clicked, the system will load the blocks the next Sunday at 3 AM.

 

 

 

Example of Completed Reservation Block

 

 

 

 

The name the system uses for the Reservation Block is the Month/Day, Payment Source, Size of job

  

 

 On the Dashboard, it lists blocked slots by the date they are going into production.

 

The tool will delete blocked jobs automatically if the blocked slots are not merged within three days.

The date the screenshot was taken is 10/14/21.  You will see the jobs that were not filled prior to 10/12/21 have been automatically deleted.

 

Repair Order:

The tool places the hours into Metal and saves the blocked hours as the original hours. Once the merge is completed, it replaces the block original hours with the merged EMS Estimate hours.

 From the Estimates Screen, select the RO you want to merge into the Block Spot. In this case Johnson, Mary.

Click on the Customer name,

 

Find the day and size job you want to merge the RO into.

 

Click on the Merge Button

 

The Repair Order will automatically open ready to fill in the RO Number.  The Actual In-Date will be populated with today’s date. This date can be changed to a date in the past if needed.

Click on the Update Repair Order button at the bottom of the page to complete the merge.

The blocks will move forward one week at a time on Sunday mornings. For example, if there is a three-week block, then at the end of the first week, the program will and one more week of the specific block three weeks out.